The Passport

By Herta Müller and Martin Chalmers

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2009

'Just as the father in the house in which we live is our father, so Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our country. And just as the mother in the house in which we live is our mother, so Comrade Elena Ceausescu is the mother of our country. Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our children. All the children love comrade Nicolae and comrade Elena, because they are their parents.'

The Passport is a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu's dictatorship and the glittering temptations of the West. Stories from the past are woven together with the problems Windisch, the village miller, faces after he applies for permission to migrate to West Germany.

Herta Müller describes with poetic attention the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat, in the Danube Plain. In sparse, lyrical language, Herta Müller captures the forlorn plight of a trapped people.

This edition is translated by Martin Chalmers, with a new foreword by Paul Bailey.

Also by Herta Müller: Nadirs, The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, and The Hunger Angel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Release date: Dec 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781782832652

Herta Müller

Herta Müller is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the European Literature Prize. She is the author of, among other books, The Hunger Angel and The Land of Green Plums. Born in Romania in 1953, Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceausescu's secret police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin.

Book preview

THE POT HOLE

Around the war memorial are roses. They form a thicket. So overgrown that they suffocate the grass. Their blooms are white, rolled tight like paper. They rustle. Dawn is breaking. Soon it will be day.

Every morning, as he cycles alone along the road to the mill, Windisch counts the day. In front of the war memorial he counts the years. By the first poplar tree beyond it, where he always hits the same pot hole, he counts the days. And in the evening, when Windisch locks up the mill, he counts the years and the days once again.

He can see the small white roses, the war memorial and the poplar tree from far away. And when it is foggy, the white of the roses and the white of the stone is close in front of him as he rides. Windisch rides on. Windisch’s face is damp, and he rides till he’s there. Twice the thorns on the rose thicket were bare and the weeds underneath were rusty. Twice the poplar was so bare that its wood almost split. Twice there was snow on the paths.

Windisch counts two years by the war memorial and two hundred and twenty-one days in the pot hole by the poplar.

Every day when Windisch is jolted by the pot hole, he thinks, The end is here. Since Windisch made the decision to emigrate, he sees the end everywhere in the village. And time standing still for those who want to stay. And Windisch sees that the night watchman will stay beyond the end.

And after Windisch has counted two hundred and twenty-one days and the pot hole has jolted him, he gets off for the first time. He leans the bicycle against the poplar tree. His steps are loud. Wild pigeons flutter out of the churchyard. They are as grey as the light. Only the noise makes them different.

Windisch crosses himself. The door latch is wet. It sticks to Windisch’s hand. The church door is locked. Saint Anthony is on the other side of the wall. He is carrying a white lily and a brown book. He is locked in.

Windisch shivers. He looks down the street. Where it ends, the grass beats into the village. A man is walking at the end of the street. The man is a black thread walking into the field. The waves of grass lift him above the ground.

THE EARTH FROG

The mill is silent. The walls are silent and the roof is silent. And the wheels are silent. Windisch has pressed the switch and put out the light. Between the wheels it is night. The dark air has swallowed the flour dust, the flies, the sacks.

The night watchman is sitting on the mill bench. He’s sleeping. His mouth is open. The eyes of his dog gleam under the bench.

Windisch carries the sack with his hands and with his knees. He leans it against the wall of the mill. The dog looks and yawns. Its white teeth set wide.

The key turns in the keyhole of the mill door. The lock clicks between Windisch’s fingers. Windisch counts. Windisch feels his temples beating and thinks, My head is a clock. He puts the key in his pocket. The dog barks. I’ll wind it up, till the spring snaps, says Windisch out loud.

The night watchman presses his hat down onto his forehead. He opens his eyes and yawns. Soldier on guard duty, he says.

Windisch walks over to the mill pond. At the edge is a stack of straw. A dark blot on the reflection in the pond. The blot goes down into the depths like a crater. Windisch pulls his bicycle out of the straw.

There’s a rat in the straw, says the night watchman. Windisch picks the blades of straw from the saddle. He throws them into the water. I saw it, he says, it threw itself into the water. The blades float like hair. They turn in small eddies. The dark crater floats. Windisch looks at his moving reflection.

The night watchman kicks the dog in the stomach. The dog yelps. Windisch looks into the crater and hears the yelping under the water. The nights are long, says the night watchman. Windisch takes a step backwards. Away from the edge. He sees the unchanging picture of the stack of straw, facing away from the edge. It is still. It has nothing to do with the crater. It is paler than the night.

The newspaper rustles. The night watchman says, My stomach is empty. He takes out some bread and bacon. The knife flashes in his hand. He chews. He scratches his wrist with the blade of the knife.

Windisch wheels the bicycle along. He looks at the moon. Still chewing, the night watchman quietly says, A man is nothing but a pheasant in the world. Windisch lifts the sack and lays it on the bicycle. A man is strong, he says, stronger than the beasts.

A corner of the newspaper is flying loose. The wind tugs like a hand. The night watchman lays the knife on the bench. I slept a little, he says. Windisch is bent over his bicycle. He raises his head.

And I woke you, he says.

Not you, says the night watchman, my wife woke me. He brushes the breadcrumbs from his jacket. I knew, he says, "that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. The moon is large. I dreamt of the dry frog. I was dead tired. And I couldn’t get to sleep. The earth frog was lying in bed. I was talking to my wife. The earth frog looked with my wife’s eyes. It had my wife’s plait. It had her nightshirt on, which had ridden up to the stomach. I said: ‘Cover yourself, your thighs are flabby.’ I said it to my wife. The earth frog pulled the nightshirt over its thighs. I sat down on the chair beside the bed. The earth frog smiled with my wife’s mouth. ‘The chair is creaking,’ it said. The chair hadn’t creaked. The earth frog had laid my wife’s plait across its shoulder. It was as long as the nightshirt. I said: ‘Your hair has grown.’ The earth frog raised its head and shouted: ‘You’re drunk, you’re going to fall off the

Reviews for The Passport

[ameise1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of Windisch and his family who want to leave dictatorial Romania and need passports. It shows the deep abundance of this region as well as the corruption and the powerlessness against the authorities.Herta Miiller has the gift with the short chapters to write a profound novella, which goes under the skin. Their pictorial language brings the reader close to the people and their needs.

[diefledermaus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While this book was depressing, it wasn’t quite as soul-crushing as her collection of short stories, Nadirs. However, I found I didn’t think it was as good as Nadirs, which was effective in its way, or The Land of Green Plums, which had a more expansive prose style. There were short sections that were very vivid and almost hallucinatory, like some of the pieces in Nadirs, and I thought those were the best parts of the book. In those cases, the flat, succinct style works well as a contrast, but narrating the whole story in that style became tedious. Windisch, a miller, is trying to escape a small, decaying village in the Banat (German) region of Romania. Everyone else is leaving or talking of leaving as well. However, obtaining the required passport proves difficult. Windisch tries to bribe the local officials with flour, but finds that he is expected to send his daughter Amalie as payment instead. While sporadic parts of the story worked, this isn’t the Müller that I’d recommend.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unremitting bleakness and despair prevail again in one of this Nobel Prize winner's early works, set in a Romanian town in which a German minority is cruelly persecuted ad nauseum. Reading this book was about as enjoyable as sticking my hand in a food processor.

[solla_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have to say that I am puzzled by the Passport by Herta Muller. Beginning my read I thought that the language of it was sparsely beautiful. However, as it went on I never felt that I was let in to an inner life of anyone enough to care about them at all. They seemed so little caring of each other, in fact, sometimes contemptful. Of course I can understand that in the face of cruelty one's feelings go underground, but then I would expect a novelist to reveal the feelings that are underground. I don't know what I was supposed to get out of this.

[banoo_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Herta Müller is the latest to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. That in itself does not ensure that her books are great. This book was a dud... it just sucked. A bunch of Germans live in Romania under Ceausescu's dictatorship and they want to move to Germany but can't get passports... well they can, it's just not easy. Whoring your daughter though is good for passports and it helps if your daughter was already a whore. Mother was too. And there's an owl that flies around informing the village of death. And a bunch of bleak, depressing images. And flour. And a church with it's door locked. And Windisch and his bicycle.She writes this book kind of like a Dick and Jane book. Short sentences. To the point... for instance... There were grey cracks between the blinds. Amalie had a temperature. Windisch couldn't sleep. He was thinking about her chewed nipples.It's a short book. Time wasted was short. It bored me. Bleakness is bleak. I hope her other books are better. I'll give her another chance. Herta looks cool. I credit her with coolness. I now end this review.

[writestuff_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Windisch, the village miller, is living with his wife and daughter in a German town in Romania. It is after the war, and Ceausescu is dictator. People are leaving Romania to live in the West where there seems to be hope for a future. But first, they must obtain a passport. Windisch watches as his neighbors pack up and leave, and still he waits for his passport. Despite deliveries of flour and money to town officials, the passport is withheld from him. And then he learns that there is still one thing he can “sell” which will buy a passport – his daughter’s virginity.The Passport is a dark, symbolic novella by 2009 Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller. Do not let its lean size fool you – it is neither an easy read, nor a quick one. Muller writes in what can only be called poetic prose. The novella is dense with symbolism. Stark and at times shocking, the language of the book is almost a puzzle to be teased out and contemplated.To fully understand Muller’s work, the reader must have some background information about Romania under Ceausescu’s rule, and some understanding of the history of the region including that with Russia. The Communists seized power in Romania in 1947. Gradually Soviet forces were coaxed into retreating from Romania and by 1965, Ceausescu had become Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party. At this time he declared Romania the Socialist Republic of Romania. Although initially Ceausescu had an open policy with Western Europe and the United States, his rule became more erratic and characterized by a deterioration of the relationship with foreign leaders from 1979 to 1989 when he was finally overthrown by a military coupe and executed.The Passport is a look at daily existence under the oppressive rule of Ceausescu. Muller’s short, stark sentences evoke a bleakness and hopelessness. She uses metaphor and surreal imagery to paint a picture of of a desperate people. Repeated images include the dark shape of an owl flying over the village, a harbinger of death. Playing on the superstition of the villagers, Muller tracks the owl’s progress through the night as he looks for a roof to light upon…the roof he picks will bring death to someone inside that home.A bird is flying over the pond. Slow and straight as if drawn along a string. Close to the water. As if it were ground. Windisch follows it with his eyes. “Like a cat,” he says. “An owl,” says the night watchman. He puts his hand to his mouth. “The light at Widow Kroner’s has been burning for three nights.” Windisch pushes his bicycle. “She can’t die,” he says, “the owl hasn’t settled on any roof yet.” - from The Passport, page 11 -Muller also includes references to the debasement of women who are used for sex or abused by men. Women are portrayed as deceitful, manipulative, and only useful for sex. One of the more moving chapters for me was Muller’s depiction of Windisch’s wife in a Russian prison where she was forced to prostitute herself to survive. Later this becomes even more meaningful when Windisch and his wife use their daughter to get a passport. People are dying every day in the Russian prison, and Windisch’s wife (who spends five years there) is determined not to be one of them. The winters are the hardest when the cold is unbearable and hunger pricks like a hedgehog in her belly.On top of the mountains there was yet another mountain range of clouds and drifting snow. Frost burned on the truck. Not everyone got off at the mine. Every morning some men and women remained sitting on the benches. They sat with open eyes. They let everyone go past. They were frozen. They were sitting on the other side. – from The Passport, page 74 -Another repeated theme is that of black vs. white – Muller paints a landscape of black images or starkly white images – there is no gray in this Romanian village. Things are simply black or white. In this village time clicks by slowly, things seem to stand still, and yet time is passing.Every day when Windisch is jolted by the pot hole, he thinks, “The end is here.” Since Windisch made the decision to emigrate, he sees the end everywhere in the village. And time standing still for those who want to stay. – from The Passport, page 7 -The Passport is not a light read – it is dark, haunting, and sad. It took me a while to get used to Muller’s language which seemed more suited for poetry than a novella…and yet by midway through the book I found myself strangely compelled to keep reading. Muller’s writing has a symmetry and a rhythm which suits the theme of her book – a story about the desperation of a people under a stifling and cruel dictatorship.I believe I missed a lot in this little book. I admit I had to look up the history of Romania. I also admit that I have always struggled to tease out the meaning in poems…and so I am sure there is much here I just did not get. This would be a fantastic book to read with a group and discuss. It is also a book which could stand a re-read. I struggled to rate The Passport – how could I assign a rating to a book which I felt I barely understood? And yet, ultimately I had to acknowledge that Muller is a brilliant writer who has written a book which is important. Although her style is not an easy style to understand, most readers who stick with the story will find The Passport a compelling read.Highly recommended for readers who love literary fiction and books which challenge them intellectually.

[lriley_43 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My second go round with Herta Muller since the Nobel prize was awarded to her. Like the other (The appointment) I'd say 'The Passport' was very good but falls short of greatness. Since the 'Land of Green plums' is one she's known for I think that's the one I'll have to get to next.In any case The Passport is more a novella (92 pages in all) than a novel. It revolves around one Windisch and his family. He is the village miller--and a farmer on the side--married to Katherine--with one daughter Amalie. Living in a small Romanian village during the Ceausescu years--they are of German extraction. They want a better life--which is another way of saying--they want out of Romania altogether. To get out means resorting to bribery. Bribing the mayor, bribing the local militiaman, bribing the local priest, bribing the postwoman. Sacks of flour aren't enough--money, livestock, furniture too. What finally does work is selling Amalie's virginity and body to all interested parties. They're reluctant but Amalie is willing because she wants out too.Muller has an acerbic wit and a very poetic metaphoric sense. Her imaging can be dazzling. Sometimes I'd even say that it is truly remarkable. Even in such a short story though she does meander at times--though she maintains control here by keeping things to very short chapters--or small parts of a whole. There were occasional spells though where I wondered where I was at. It's a bit uneven in the telling. Even so--IMO she is a major talent--it's just that so far for me in the two books I've read she hasn't put it altogether yet.