All the children love comrade Nicolae and comrade Elena, because they are their
parents.' The Passport is a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German
village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceaucescu's dicta
torship and the glittering temptations of the West. Stories from the past are wo
ven together with the problems Windisch, the village miller, faces after he appl
ies for permission to migrate to West Germany. Herta Muller describes with poeti
c attention the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotte
n region, the Banat, in the Danube Plain.
In sparse, poetic language, Herta Mull
er captures the forlorn plight of a trapped people. Translated by Martin Chalmer
s. With a new foreword by Paul Bailey.
