Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture: Text Here

A quick note: Herta Müller, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, delivered her lecture in Stockholm yesterday. You can now read the full text online; the video should be coming soon.

My grandfather had been a soldier in the First World War. He knew what he was talking about when he said, often and embittered, in reference to his son Matz: When the flags start to flutter, common sense slides right into the trumpet. This warning also applied to the following dictatorship, which I experienced. Every day you could see the common sense of the profiteers, both big and little, sliding right into the trumpet. The trumpet I decided not to blow.