"I stand (as so often) next to myself." This is how Herta Müller began her speech after receiving the Nobel Prize. In a lengthy conversation with Angelika Klammer, she recounts her unusual life journey, from a child herding cows to a world-renowned writer in the city hall of Stockholm. She talks about her childhood in Romania, coming of age and the awakening political consciousness, early encounters with literature, conflicts with the dictatorship of communism, and her own path to writing. With her account of arriving in a new country, she also offers an unusual perspective on Germany in the 1980s and 1990s and on the society we live in today.