Barack Obama and another Nobel Laureate

Looking at the website of the Nobel prize committee I found an interview about why Barack Obama was awarded this year's Peace prize.  Like many others I was surprised that Obama was awarded the prize so early and I would like to wait and see how successful his diplomacy is in reducing conflicts and weaponry.

I also discovered that the Nobel winner this year in Literature is Herta Műller.  In awarding the prize the committee say that she, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".  She was born in a German speaking part of Romania and was banned from publishing her work in that country because she was critical of the dictatorship.  She emigrated in 1987 and now lives in Germany.