Archive for the ‘Romania’ Category
THE DAYS OF THE KING by Filip Florian
It’s 1886, and the dentist Joseph Strauss follows Karl Ludwig of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen from Prussia to Bucharest, where the latter is crowned King Carol I of Romania. Carol’s relationship with Joseph strays beyond the dental boundaries and they develop a certain camaraderie, particularly when Joseph arranges for the services of a blind prostitute to be made available (in strictest secret) to the politically beleaguered king. It is precisely the intimate nature of the knowledge Joseph carries which eventually leads to the king’s deliberate distancing of himself from the dentist. However, when the three-year-old Princess Maria dies of scarlet fever, and no further heirs seem forthcoming, Joseph wonders whether the King ought to be informed that the blind whore now has a son with a suspiciously aristocratic nose.
August 17, 2011
· 
Judi Clark · 
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Tags: 19th-Century, Real People Fiction, Time Period Fiction · Posted in: Contemporary, Facing History, Romania, Translated, World Lit, y Award Winning Author
SMUGGLED by Christina Shea
This is Éva Farkas, a Hungarian Jew, releasing a homing pigeon in the bleak courtyard at Auschwitz sometime in the early 1990s. Smuggled out of Hungary at the age of five, she has survived by living under an assumed name (Anca) in Romania, survived years of Communist oppression, years of “peeping between her fingers,” always in fear of denunciation, paying for accomodation with access to her body. Now, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, she has come home again to reclaim her old identity and embark on a life too long postponed.
August 14, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Identity, Time Period Fiction · Posted in: Facing History, Reading Guide, Romania, World Lit
TRAIN TO TRIESTE by Domnica Radulescu
Domnica Radulescu’ semi-autobiographical debut novel, TRAIN TO TRIESTE, is a fascinating page turner, full of contrasts. She describes, with nostalgia and much love, her homeland, Romania, with its physical beauty, it’s mountains, plains, rivers, forests, and extraordinary seaside resorts and homes on the Black Sea. She writes of “one beautiful summer,” with its “linden trees and vodka made from fermented plums and stars and mountains and raspberries….” The scenery is “gorgeous,” the Carpathian Mountains are dark and mysterious – a perfect place for our protagonist, seventeen year-old Mona Manoliu, to fall in love. It is the summer of 1977.
November 16, 2009
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Political, Romania, Time Period Fiction · Posted in: Debut Novel, Romania, World Lit
