The latest addition to my website is Dan Lungu‘s Raiul găinilor [Heaven for Chickens]. The novel is set in Acadia Street, during the post-Nicolae Ceaușescu era. Most of the people that live there are retired and not very well-off. The novel is a satire on both modern Romania and on these people, who drink a lot, argue, gossip and do not do much else. We get very funny stories from the man who during the Nicolae Ceaușescu era, decided to go and visit Ceaușescu to complain about the trams and is received and even gets a free car, to the plague of worms, the rabid dogs controlled by a religious fanatic and the government’s plan to knock down all the houses, without informing the residents and then backing off, also without informing the residents. There is the woman who takes to her bed to die and does not die and the woman who manages to get a sneaky look inside the rich colonel’s house and gossips about it, inventing more details all the time. It is very funny and quite unlike most of the Romanian novels I have previously read.