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DU professor emerita with ties to Nobel Prize for Literature

Monday, October 12, 2009

Sieglinde Lug translated and wrote afterward for Nadirs, by author Herta Müller

DENVER— Sieglinde Lug, professor emerita at the University of Denver, translated Nobel Prize winning author Herta Müller’s Nadirs (University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Müller, a German author, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature Oct. 8, 2009.

“It’s really wonderful that a book that is so powerful will get more attention now,” Lug says.

The book is based on Müller’s childhood experiences in Romania. She describes a troubled life where violence and corruption are prevalent under the oppression of the state.

In the afterward Lug writes, “the latent violence and corruption in the home become symbolic for the conditions in the country, and the silence of her parents represents the human repressions in society in general.”

Lug was revising the book during the time she taught a Techniques of Translations class at DU. She mentions four of her students in the afterward. Since the announcement of the Nobel Prize, she’s received emails from some of those students.

“The students quite helpful in making suggestions,” she says. “It is wonderful that they heard about this.”

Lug taught Comparative Literature, German and Women’s Studies at the University of Denver from 1978 to 2005. She was director of Women’s Studies from 1995 to 1999.

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Contact:  Kristal Griffith
Phone: (303) 871-4117
E-mail: Kristal.Griffith@du.edu

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