La Belle Roumaine tells the story of Ana, a beautiful and bewitching Romanian woman. Shuttling between the capital cities of Europe. The novel follows Ana as she seduces cafe owners, philosophers, and wandering emigrants alike, each receiving a different version of her life story. To some, she's a former nurse, to others, a former spy.
A middle aged man goes through a nightmare of hiding and getting away until he manages to cross a frontier guarded by soldiers and dogs. He's made it back to his native village. There he finds his whole family gathered around a big table, as if for a wedding, a baptism or a wake, but no one recognizes him, not even his mother.
Emilia, a pensioner in northern Romania, is forced to confront the nostalgic illusions she nurtures as a reaction to the grim post-communist present when her daughter, now living in Canada, telephones urging her not to vote for the former communists in upcoming elections.
Matei Brunul was the first Romanian novel to explore the carceral world of the former regime, but it is also a subtle meditation on Heinrich von Kleist's On the Marionette Theatre and the ways in which a totalitarian state and ultimately fiction itself create and manipulate puppets.
Prenumerera på vårt nyhetsbrev för att få fantastiska erbjudanden och inspiration för din nästa läsning.
Genom att registrera dig accepterar du vår personuppgiftspolicy.
