An e-mailer, on Nobel Lit laureate Herta Mueller:

I became interested in Herta Mueller in the mid 90s, because my parents came from the same ethnic German community in Romania, from which she comes. She writes in a clear, accessible language of the persecution she experienced as a young person who admired the West (through her reading habits) and who refused to join the Communist party. Despite the fact that she studied literature in Romania (a field of study that automatically lead to a career in the Communist Party), she was ostracized by her refusal to conform to the party line and was sent to work in factories in a campaign of humiliation. Her family suffered greatly for this refusal, and, one she was able to leave Romania for Germany, she suggests that her fellow friends were killed by the Securitate.
I have no idea of her current political beliefs, only what I have read in her novels. I have met her. She is softspoken and an improbably crusader for causes. It is fair to say, however, that she is the Solshenitsyn of Romania, and the literary quality of her short novels, with their simple prose, is unquestioned.