In the words of the Swedish Academy, Müller "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".
Born in a German-speaking enclave in Romania, she emigrated to Germany in 1987. Her mother spent five years in a work camp in present-day Ukraine and her father served in the Waffen SS during World War II.
One of her most recent works, Atemschaukel (2009), portrayed the exile of German Romanians in the Soviet Union, where many German Romanians were deported at the end of the war.
She currently lives in Berlin, and since 1995 has served as a member of the Germany Academy for Language and Literature (Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung).