Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Read Your Way Around the World - Romania


Read Your Way Around the World invites you to Romania.

If contemporary novels based in Romania tells us anything - it's that World War II and the subsequent communist regime were surely the most profound events of the twentieth century for Romania. The first half of the twentieth century has been described as Romania's golden age with Romanians making important contributions to literature, philosophy and the visual arts. The novels featured here focus on the triumph of the human spirit in the face of Nazism, Jewish extermination and totalitarian regimes. We can't talk about Romania without a special look at its most famous region. Stay tuned for the next Read Your Way Around the World - Transylvania

The Last Hundred Days (M) by Patrick McGuinness has a young British man arrive in Bucharest in 1989. Nicholae Ceausescu's repressive regime is in its last stage and this young academic finds himself embroiled in political complexities. A literary portrait of a totalitarian regime on the brink of change.


No One is Here Except All of Us (M) by Ramona Ausubel takes place in a remote Jewish village in Romania in 1939. As the forces of war and extermination grow closer the villagers find that there is no path to escape so they re-imagine the world irrespective of fact or history. They assign themselves new identities, relationships, ages, occupations, all in an effort to deny the dangerous reality encroaching.


Painter of Silence (M) by Georgina Harding. A nurse finds a deaf man on the steps of her hospital. She had shared childhood experiences with him before the war. The man, Tinu, is an artist and they relive their past through his drawings. The war had separated them and destroyed their way of life. A haunting piece of literary fiction.


Train to Trieste (M) by Domnica Radulescu. In the last years of Ceaucescu's regime, teenage Mona Manoliu falls in live with Minai in a summer romance. Mona sees Minai wearing the clothing of the secret police and it feeds her fear and paranoia. She escapes to the United States to a career and family. Finally she returns to Romania and the truth about Minai.


The Apothecary (M) by Martha Blum. Felix is a pharmacist in the city of Czernowtiz during and following World War II. He saves a Jewish girl from deportation by the Russians. He also saves his parents, but then has to flee himself with the advent of the German army. Decades later Felix meets up with his former girlfriend in Austria who is married to a German soldier.


Blood of Victory by (M) Alan Furst. Oil is a driving force in our world today as it was in 1939 when the British tried to stop the export of oil from Romania to Germany. I.A. Serebin, a Russian journalist, is employed by the British Secret Service to divert the shipment. A suspenseful and sometimes violent spy story set in World War II.


The Appointment by (M) Herta Muller. A young woman living under Ceausescu's regime is summoned and questioned regarding her practice of sewing notes into linings of men's suits destined for Italy asking men to marry her. On her way to the appointment she reflects on the devastating things which have happened to her family and friends. In her distraction she misses her stop and stumbles upon something even more sinister.


By a Romanian writer and translated into English, Youth Without Youth (M) by Mircea Eliade is a combination of fantasy, historical fiction and psychological thriller. Dominic Matei is an elderly intellectual , who through some extraordinary event, manages to maintain his life with physical and mental vigour. He is then sought by the Nazis for their medical experiments and is smuggled to safety.

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