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Constantin
Noica
Six Maladies
of the Contemporary Spirit
Publication date: 14 November 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84102-203-1 HB £20
In
this unique work, Noica analyses history, culture and
the individual in what he describes as the fundamental
precariousness of being. ‘Maladies’ of the
spirit are no longer debilitating, but creative for
our European interest in change, unity, and diversity. |
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Ioan
Grosan
The Cinematography Caravan
Publication date: 14 November 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84102-205-5 HB £20
Grosan's
first book of short stories won a '‘Writers' Union
Prize' establishing him as a major voice of 'Generation
80'. Evocative in detail and mystery, characters and
plots revel in the banal and the divine in perfectly
pitched prose.
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Max
Blecher
Occurrence in the Immediate Unreality
Publication date: 14 November 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84102-207-9 HB £20
In
childhood, Blecher suffers 'crises of unreality' and
an eerie stage is set for a future of unsettling characters
and events. This autobiographical fiction offers an
account of Blecher's ambiguous, dream-like experiences
of sexual awakening as an adolescent.
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Mircea
Ivanescu
Lines
Poems Poetry
Publication date: 14 November 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84102-217-8 HB £20
Ivanescu's
poetry represents the achievement of a little known
master. Centring on a wide cast of characters, including
his alter ego 'mopete', Ivanescu's idiosyncratic, lyrical
sensibility offers allusive, comic and elegiac meditations
on our common lot.
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Publication
date: 19 November 2010 |
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Ioan
Es. Pop
No Way out of Hadesburg and other Poems
ISBN: 978-1-84102-209-3 HB
Originally a teacher in a village called Hadesburg, Ioan Es. Pop expresses in his poetry his response to existence in Romania under communist control, forbidden to write but able to work as a builder on Ceau?escu’s palace and living alone in a bachelor block. Pop’s poetry is an autobiographical account of such a time, a life with no way out.
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Stelian
Tanase
Aunt Varvara’s Clients
ISBN: 978-1-84102-221-5 HB
Stelian Tanase explores Romania's communist 'roots of disaster' from early illegal membership of the communist underground to their eventual rise to power and the struggle for supremacy. Tanase sketches a pattern of warring factions through an incredible swarm of characters who abruptly fall completely silent after the final victory of Gheorghiu-Dej and the formation of the communist police state and its hierarchy. A Romania then on course for human disaster. |
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Daniel
Banulescu
Who won the World War of Religions
978-1-84102-212-3 HB
Contemporary madness in its entirety is summarised in Daniel Banulescu's play, set in an asylum populated with twelve dangerous madmen who are divided as believers of the four major religions. This is theatre in a world governed by insanity and is the principal merit and black humour of the play.
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Filip and Matei Florian
The Baiut Alley Lads
978-1-84102-267-3 HB
Two brothers, Filip and Matei, are growing up in a totalitarian society. Every day life is recounted through their young eyes. Their story is one of childish naivety set against a backdrop of life imposed by communism. Their world is filled with characters from children’s television, broadcast by the official communist media, alongside magazines and cinema. ‘Joe Lemonade’, ‘Giani Morandi’, ‘Rome Specs’ and ‘Brooslee’ accentuate the absurdity and grotesqueness of their surroundings. |
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Publication
date: 25 November 2011 |
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Mircea Cartarescu
Why We Love Women
978-1-84102-206-2 HB
Cartarescu brings together twenty short stories that he wrote for ELLE magazine. The protagonist of every story is female, but they are not individual portraits of women - it is a group portrait of womanhood.
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Nicolae Manolescu
Wasted Morning
978-1-84102-208-6 HB
Inspired by the combination of political intrigue and love contained within the 'belles lettres' of the great French novelists, Manolescu tells the story of a great love.
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Ion
Muresan
The Book of Winter and Other Poems
978-1-84102-213-0 HB
There is both an enigmatic and an original character to the poetic language of Ion Muresan who concerns himself with the political nature of Romanian poetry in this anthology. Muresan's poetry draws upon Transylvanian legends to address the communist manipulation and monopoly of truth by regaining individual thought through his poetry, which reflects upon what it is to be Romanian. |
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Razvan
Petrescu
Small Changes in Attitude
978-1-84102-214-7 HB
Razvan Petrescu is cited by Adriana Bittel as one of Romania's finest short prose writers. This anthology of short fiction paints each story as a photographic reality and journeys from realistic black humor to the ironic and fantastic. This collection includes his 1989 debut, 'Summer Garden', 'Eclipse', a modern take on the biblical story of Cain and Abel, and 'Friday Afternoon' wherein an epidemic kills everyone in an apartment block. |
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Publication
date: 1 November 2012 |
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Petru
Cimpoesu
Simion the Liftite
978-1-84102-215-4 HB
This novel captures hope and despair in post-revolution Romania. Christ descends for three days at the height of the revolution in December 1989 and stands in the presidential election, offering himself as saviour and sacrifice once again. Mircea Iorgulescu says of Petru Cimpoesu that there is a permanent ambiguity in this narrative, which never descends into caricature, but rather is viewed with understanding and even, quite often, warmth. The lack of aggression comes from aesthetic style. The serenity of tone here has its origin in the pure pleasure of constructing a story. |
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Lena
Constante
Silent Escape and Impossible Escape
978-1-84102-216-1 HB
Lena Constante is one of the few women political prisoners to have written about her years of imprisonment. She describes in detail her physical and psychological humiliation and suffering in the solitary confinement common in communist Romania. The whole premise of this novel rests on Constante's ability to survive, to escape into her mind and on solidarity with other female inmates. A work of human survival against the odds. |
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Gheorghe
Craciun
The Iceberg of Modern Poetry
978-1-84102-204-8 HB
Gheorghe Craciun redefines modernist poetry through the analysis of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Baudelaire and Whitman. Through this Craciun proposes a new direction for modern poetry, one that is in permanent tension. This eventually leads Craciun to consider a third direction, one that revisits old traditions that are still reflected and reinflected in modern poetry. The Iceberg of Modern Poetry is a 500 page authoritative contribution to international debate on this subject. |
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Andrei
Plesu
Picturesque and Melancholy
978-1-84102-218-5 HB
Plesu questions European culture through the aesthetic of melancholy and literary picturesque myths of Western culture. A controversial text at the time it was written, he approaches the topic from a philosophical stance with an exuberant writing style and an undertow of the subversive. He fell out of favour with the communist regime and was banned from publishing which resulted in his exile to Tescani a community in Bacau, Moldova, Romania. |
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Publication
date: 1 November 2013 |
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Gabriela
Adamesteanu
Wasted Morning
978-1-84102-211-6 HB
Wasted Morning is a truly modern novel, beginning and ending in the present yet resurrecting a Romania of the past. The story centres on Madam Vica Delca who visits Ivona Scarlat. During this visit Ivona receives news of her husband's sudden death, triggering memories of the past which are then re-lived. Adamesteanu creates a world of old upper bourgeois Romania at the brink of World War One. |
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Florina
Ilis
The Children’s Crusade
978-1-84102-220-8 HB
A train is hijacked by children, who organise resistance against the authorities sent from Bucharest. In their attempts to negotiate, the authorities prove hypocritical, lacking any understanding of the children's demands. The novel presents a clash of ideologies relating to what it is to be Romanian and to the realities of life under Ceausescu's communist rule. Ilis weaves two differing viewpoints together, reversing perspectives and constructing a world adrift. |
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N.
Steinhardt
Diary of Happiness
978-1-84102-210-9 HB
Romania was not the place for a Jewish intellectual at a time when the regime was re-Stalinising. Steinhardt could have escaped prison if he became a witness for the prosecution in a communist show trial. He refused and was imprisoned in 1959 for 'high treason' and 'machinating against the socialist order'. These pages are an introspective diary of Steinhardt's prison years, as Romanian literary critic Mircea Martin explains, Diary of Happiness is not only a revelation of faith, but is also a revelation of freedom and of inner freedom. |
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Ion
Vartic
Cioran Naïve and Sentimental
978-1-84102-222-2 HB
A biography of Emil Cioran, a philosopher and freethinker, born in Transylvania, who had an inferiority complex and was ashamed of his birthplace. Cioran was attracted to Western culture, because his perception was that Eastern European countries have always been dominated by Western European history. Vartic suggests that Cioran represents one extreme and that Romanians are proud of their cultural heritage, taking the virtues of home and making it theirs. |
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