Two novels by Nobel Prize-winner Müller set for English publication

(AFP/PIERRE-FRANCK COLOMBIER)

Two titles by Nobel Prize-winner Herta Müller are due to be published in English. The first is a new novel called Everything I Possess I Carry With Me, which tells the story of a German-Romanian teenager sent to a Ukrainian labor camp. The second, The Fox Was Always the Hunter, is an earlier novel first published in Germany in 1992.

Everything I Possess I Carry With Me ( Atemschaukel) was published in August 2009 by Müller's German publisher, Carl Hanser Verlag. Metropolitan Books has obtained US and Canadian rights and says it plans to publish Everything in September 2011 and The Fox Was Always a Hunter ( Der Fuchs War Damals Schon Der Jager) a year later. Portobello Books will release the titles in the UK, beginning with Everything in September 2010. Translation rights have also been sold to publishers in Poland and Sweden.

Herta Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 8. The author was relatively unknown outside Germany before her win, and only five of her more than 20 books have been published in English. Among them, The Land of Green Plums jumped from 78,235th place to seventh place on the Amazon.com sales charts the day after the Nobel announcement, and The Passport went from 2,290,352 to the 209.

In the UK, Granta publishers reissued Müller's novel The Land of Green Plums following her win, and Serpent's Tail reissued The Passport, her first book in English translation. In the US, Metropolitan Books, which has published a number of other Müller titles, recently reissued two of her works, The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment.