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The narrative work of Herta Müller, which also includes experimental poetry and essays, deals with various modes of oppression, persecution, and surveillance under dictatorships, and their devastating consequences on human relationships. With the aid of unusual language, she evokes the growing fear of the individual as well as the unrelenting destruction of the private sphere and of intimacy. To this end, the novelist often uses traumatic events which she herself has expe­rienced, and sketches out strategies aimed at warding off anxiety by transposing it into word-images which can be hermetic. Her texts offer committed and public viewpoints concerning political events, and are at the same time an attempt to defend herself against serious external attacks.