**German author Herta Mueller has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, the academy in Stockholm has announced.**The Romanian-born writer follows last year’s French winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, while British writer Doris Lessing won in 2007.
Mueller, born in 1953, is renowned for her depiction of the harsh conditions under Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime.
The Swedish academy praised Mueller for both her poetry and prose.
It said the writer had an ability to “depict the landscape of the dispossessed”.
Mueller, who emigrated to Germany in 1987, was dismissed from her job in Romania during the 1970s due to her refusal to co-operate with the regime’s secret police.
Her first collection of German language short stories, published in 1982, were censored in Romania.
She was born to a family from Romania’s German minority and her mother was deported to a labour camp in the Soviet Union after World War II.
The writer is awarded a prize of 10 million Swedish Krone (£892,000) along with the honour, which will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm later this year.