I’m a Communist Biddy! - Dan Lungu

My rating: 5/5 Book review: For those of you who have seen Tales from the Golden Age and enjoyed it, Dan Lungu's novel could reiterate that experience. There is also a movie made after the novel in 2013.  I’m a Communist Biddy! is nowhere near a profound, serious novel; it...

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Vain Art of the Fugue - Dumitru Tsepeneag

My rating: 4/5 Book review: In Romanian, the word fugă has a double meaning: that of run/flight and that of fugue, the polyphonic musical composition in which the theme is repeated by several voices and developed through the counterpoint technique. The word is used in this novel both ways: the...

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Satantango - László Krasznahorkai

My rating: 5/5 Book review: I am reading Satantango at my parents' house. A communist block of flats, tiny cubicles with thin walls, through which the noise of a Tv set penetrates from my neighbor upstairs. Later on, my mother comes in my room and falls asleep on my bed. Poor mom, she is always...

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The Hooligan's Return: A Memoir - Norman Manea

My rating: 4/5 Nothing is incompatible in Romania. In 1986, at the age of 50 and three years before the fall of communism in Romania, Norman Manea decided to emigrate abroad, first to Germany, later reaching the final destination - The Paradise, The Other World, The United States. He was to come...

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Burial Rites - Hannah Kent

My rating: 4/5 Book review: You will be lost, you are not going home, you are gone, silence will claim you, suck your life down into its black waters and churn out stars that might remember you, but if they do they will not say, they will not say, and if no one will say your name you are forgotten....

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