CROSSING BORDERS -HERTA MULLER AND ASPECTS OF CULTURAL IDENTITY

The complexities of German literatures have been subject to various literary investigations, theories and approaches in the last few decades. Herta Muller, a significant representative of the last generation of Romanian-born German writers who have established themselves in the contemporary German literature, writes about the South-East European imaginary, estrangement, dissolution and forming of identity, oppression of the individual, consequences of the National Socialist past, the perils of rigid ethnocentrism, cruelties of the communist regime, transiting borders and time. The proposed research paper attempts to investigate Herta Muller's literary achievement having in view among others concepts of the third space, transculturalism, periphery-centre, cultural hibridity, trying to elucidate aspects of her contribution to the diversity of the literary palette of contemporary German literature.