STOCKHOLM, October 8 (RIA Novosti) - German writer Herta Mueller has won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Thursday.

Romanian-born Mueller, 56, is known for her novels and essays depicting life in communist Romania under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Her works have been translated into over 20 languages.

The Swedish Academy praised Mueller as writer whose work "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

The writer immigrated from Romania to Germany in 1987. She lives in Berlin.

Last year's winner, British writer Doris Lessing, complained that the subsequent media attention made it impossible for her to concentrate on her work.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1970), Mikhail Sholokhov (1965), and Ivan Bunin (1933) are the Russian writers to have won the award. Boris Pasternak was forced by Soviet authorities to decline the prize in 1958.

The Nobel prizes, established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his will in 1895, also covers chemistry, medicine, physics, peace and economics.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced later this week and the economics announcement is set for Monday.