The Parallels of Self-Reflective Writing: A Comparative Analysis of Herta Müller’s Novel The Land of Green Plums and Essay How Perception Invents Itself

Abstract

Following her emigration to Germany in the late 1980s, Herta Müller’s essays began to focus on the writing process and the interplay between memory, creative thought, and the written text. This thematic concern also appeared in her early fictional works. Self-reflective approaches to writing first surfaced in her essay collection Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel. Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet (1991) and continued in later collections such as Der König verneigt sich und tötet and Immer derselbe Schnee und immer derselbe Onkel (2011). This article aims to examine how Müller stages the act of writing in a self-reflexive manner in her 1990s essays, and how this is mirrored in her fictional works. The article addresses this question in detail.