Editor's Choice feature in the July 2010 Issue of Explore TACA

Editor's Choice

By Fernando Ramos

En tierras bajas
Herta Müller
Editorial Santillana

No matter their country of origin or social standing, children's eyes will always be filled with innocence, honesty, transparency and several other attributes that help them perceive reality as it is, without distortions. Unavoidably, daily events make them lose that innocence. This can happen suddenly or as the years pass.

Nadirs by Herta Müller, who was born in Romania in 1953, contains 15 stories in which the author describes the surroundings of a girl. Told from either a child's or an adolescent's point of view and with enormous sensibility, each of the stories has a bucolic, almost dream-like, setting—but they're all brutally real.

Although the stories are set in a Romanian town, there's a universal feel to them; they could take place anywhere in the world, leading readers to identify with them. The book tells of a girl and her parents, uncles, grandparents, neighbors—human beings who interact with her and show her their virtues (those who have them) and defects, and as a group illustrate the reality of the human condition.

The book is worthy of praise in that it doesn't feature extreme violence or use artificial means to highlight the main character's suffering. On the contrary, the language used is tender and innocent, at times deeply poetic, while also being tough and decisive. It goes from a tender image to absolute pain, and each word hits hard.

Herta Müller's words are moving and capable of producing different reactions from one paragraph to the next; they can paint a smile, and a few words later make us cry.

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