In 2009, Müller enjoyed the greatest international success of her career. Her novel "Atemschaukel" (published in English as "The Hunger Angel") was nominated for the Deutscher Buchpreis (German Book Prize) and won the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award. In this book, Müller describes the journey of a young man to a gulag in the Soviet Union, the fate of many Germans in Transylvania after World War II. It was inspired by the experience of poet Oskar Pastior, whose memories she had made notes of, and also by what happened to her own mother.