The latest addition to my website is Mateiu Caragiale‘s . This is a new translation of a novel voted the best Romanian novel by a poll of Romanian readers. It follows a dissolute group of people who carouse, drink, gamble and whore in fin-de-siècle Bucharest in the area of the Old Court, a now much … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Andrea Bajani‘s Se consideri le colpe (If You Kept a Record of Sins). Our narrator is Lorenzo who learns of the death of his mother in Romania at the beginning of the book. She had been treated as the black sheep by her family and then kicked out … Read more
I have now read twenty Romanian novels in a row. The overall impression is that Romanians have had a thoroughly miserable twentieth century. Starting with the oppression of the peasants, as described in Zaharia Stancu‘s Desculț (Barefoot), followed by World War I, described in several of the novels I read, for which the Romanians were … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mihail Sebastian‘s De două mii de ani (For Two Thousand Years). This is a novel about anti-Semitism which, for a long time, was very prevalent in Romania. Our narrator is at university studying law in the 1920s and he and others Jews are frequently attacked, not just verbally … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Max Blecher‘s Întâmplări din irealitatea imediată (Adventures in Immediate Irreality; later: Occurrence in the Immediate Unreality). Blecher was dying of spinal tuberculosis when he wrote this book which was very much influenced by his stay in France when he met some of the Surrealists. On the surface it … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Irina Teodorescu‘s La Malédiction du bandit moustachu [The Curse of the Moustached Bandit]. At the beginning of the 20th century, a Robin Hood-type bandit is tricked by Gheorghe Marinescu who manages to steal the bandit’s ill-gotten gains and leaves him to die locked in a cellar. Before he … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Panait Istrati‘s Les Chardons du Baragan (The Thistles of the Baragan). The novel is set in the very inhospitable region of Romania called Bărăgan, known for its thistles. The poor people struggle to make a living there, We follow the story of Mataké, who is a boy for … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Cecilia Stefanescu‘s Intrarea soarelui (Sun Alley). Emi and Sal are twelve year olds. Neither has a sibling. They meet and fall for one another but are, of course, too young to do anything about it. We follow their growing love and passion. However his parents do not approve … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Filip Florian‘s Degete mici (Little Fingers). The basic story involves an archaeological dig of a Roman fort. About 300 feet from the dig, a horde of seemingly modern bones is found. It is immediately suspected that they are the bones of victims from a massacre by the communists … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gellu Naum‘s Zenobia (Zenobia ). Naum was a Surrealist poet and this is very much a Surrealist poet’s novel. Our hero is called Gellu Naum. While visiting Mr Sima in the country in the depths of winter, he meets and immediately falls in love with Zenobia, the name … Read more