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
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 Zsuzsa Selyem‘s Moszkvában esik (It’s Raining in Moscow). This is a series of interrelated stories concerning the Beczásy family, who were driven out of Armenia and settled in what was then Hungary, but in the last century changed hands three times and is now in Romania. Aided by … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ruxandra Cesereanu‘s Angelus (Angelus). Three angels arrive in Metropolis, the capital of Homeland. They seem harmless but they are also mute. What do they want? Even they do not know. The first part of the book is the reaction of all and sundry to them – politicians, religious … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mircea Cărtărescu‘s Travesti [Travesty]. The novel is narrated by the thirty-four year old Victor, a successful writer but with a troubled mind, clearly traumatised by an event that happened when he was seventeen. He is now writing the book about the event which took place on a school … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mircea Cărtărescu‘s Solenoid. This is Cărtărescu’s masterpiece. Partially it is the story of a man who tries and fails to become a writer and ends up a teacher of Romanian in a quasi-Dickensian school in Bucharest. We follow his life – his failed marriage his struggle with is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mircea Cărtărescu‘s Levantul [The Levant]. This is a mock epic, which, in the original Romanian was written primarily in verse form, but, for the translations (French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish but not English) was primarily converted to prose, with some verse. It tells of the adventures of a … Read more
I have just returned from a cruise down the Danube, into the Black Sea and up the Dnieper. Though this was not the purpose, there was a lot to see of literary interest. Only a small part of the journey was in Romania but we did stop at Constanța. In Roman times, Constanța was known … Read more