Herta Mueller, a novelist and poet who wrote about harsh life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. The choice of Mueller, who is little known in the United States and in many other parts of the world, stoked recent criticism that the Nobel committee favors European writers. Mueller, an ethnic German born in Romania, was censored and harassed for her depictions of life under the Romanian communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. The Nobel judges praised Mueller, "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." The writer, who lives in Berlin, is the third European in a row to win the $1.4 million prize. It is has been 15 years since an American won the Nobel for literature; in 1993 it was given to Toni Morrison. "I am very surprised and still cannot believe it," Mueller said in a statement released by her publisher in Germany. "I can't say anything more at the mo...
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