Herta Mueller's Nobel Lecture

In today's Nobel Lecture, Herta Mueller tells the audience about a handkerchief which is not really a handkerchief.

"I wish I could utter a sentence for all those whom dictatorships deprive of dignity every day, up to and including the present—a sentence, perhaps, containing the word handkerchief. Or else the question: DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF?
Can it be that the question about the handkerchief was never about the handkerchief at all, but rather about the acute solitude of a human being?"

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