The latest addition to my website is Gabriela Adameșteanu‘s Dimineață pierdută (Wasted Morning). The novel gives a panorama of Romania and its sufferings from the beginning of World War I to 1975. Much of what happens we see through the eyes of the seventy-year old Vica Delcă, who has had a hard life. Her father … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Augustin Buzura‘s Recviem pentru nebuni și bestii (Requiem for Fools and Beasts). Much of this novel is set after the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989 but, as the title tells us, Buzura does not think things have improved much. Matei Popa is the editor of a crusading … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Petru Dumitriu‘s Incognito (Incognito). It is set in the period after World War II but before Ceaușescu took power. Our hero is a Romanian government official who had had trouble with the authorities but has now been rehabilitated. He wants to go abroad with his wife, officially just … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gib Mihăescu‘s Donna Alba. Our hero, Mihai Aspru, has a colourful early life , running away, working on ships and trying to join the Foreign Legion in 1915. Back home he joins the Romanian army in World War I but survives, though his father, a doctor, dies. Back … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vintila Hori‘s Dieu est né en exil (God Was Born in Exile). This is the fourth book on my website about Ovid’s exile but the first by a Romanian. Ovid was exiled by Emperor Augustus in 9 A.D. to Tomis which is now Constanța in modern-day Romania.The book … Read more
I have finally added a subscription feature to this blog. Yes, I know that I should have done it years ago but better late than never. You will find it to the right of any blog post, below the Search and above the Archives. See illustration to left (don’t try and use this one as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Camil Petrescu‘s Ultima noapte de dragoste, întâia noapte de război [The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War]. This is a love story and a war story. Stefan Gheorghidiu meets a woman at university. They fall in love and get married. At first all goes well … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Magda Cârneci‘s FEM (FEM). This is nominally a series of stories told Scheherazade-like by an unnamed woman to her unnamed and useless, about-to-be-dumped boyfriend. However, the stories are not Aladdin or Sindbad the Sailor but tell of her life, focussing as much on the images and impressions as … Read more
Regularly, at around this time of the year, I concentrate on reading books from just one nationality and this year it is Romania. For most Western readers who know anything about Romanian literature, the writers they have heard of or even read will be expatriates, sometimes, perhaps, without our readers being aware that they were … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vítězslav Nezval‘s Žena v množném čísle (Woman in the Plural). This is not even vaguely a novel but,rather, a collection of pieces – poetry, short prose pieces and a drama – all of which are surrealistic in nature, as Nezval was on one of, if not the leading … Read more