Herta Muller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for work that "depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller leaves her apartment after she had won the 2009 Nobel literature prize in Berlin, October 8, 2009. Mueller, who charted the brutality and oppressiveness of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, was lost for words when she learnt she had won the 2009 Nobel literature prize. Mueller is known for works such as "The Land of Green Plums" which she dedicated to Romanian friends killed under Ceausescu's Communist rule and "The Appointment" in which a Romanian woman sews notes saying "Marry Me" into suits of men bound for Italy.[Xinhua/AFP Photo]

Muller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed,"the Swedish Academy said.

"She really has a story to tell with a good language," Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said after the announcement.

Muller, a member of Romania's ethnic German minority who was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain by the communist government, was born on Aug. 17, 1953, in the German-speaking town of Nitzkydorf in Banat, Romania.

Muller made her debut with the collection of short stories Niederungen in 1982. In 1987, she emigrated together with her husband, author Richard Wagner. Her works have been translated into many languages.

German writer Herta Mueller arrives for a news conference in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009. Herta Mueller, a little-known Romanian-born author who was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday in an award seen as a nod to the 20th anniversary of communism's collapse.[Xinhua/Reuters Photo]

Last year's literature prize went to French novelist Jean-Marie Le Clezio.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Monday.

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, established the Nobel Prizes in his will in 1895. The first awards were handed out six years later.

Besides the monetary prize, each award includes a diploma, a gold medal and an invitation to the prize ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. The peace prize is handed out in Oslo.