Bøger af Norman Manea

"La sombra exiliada es una novela psicolâogica e intelectual, un collage que entrecruza la vida de un superviviente del Holocausto, su existencia posterior en una dictadura comunista y el exilio en Amâerica, con sus obsesiones, las de un apasionado de la literatura. El discurso narrativo, desarrollado en varios niveles, estâa dominado por su pasiâon por los libros y la intensa intimidad con su hermanastra, con la que compartiâo el horror del campo. La amistad entre el protagonista -el Nâomada Misâantropo- y Gèunther, un rumano de etnia alemana, exiliado en Berlâin, obsesionado por el Holocausto y la culpa alemana, marca una retrospectiva de los dramâaticos acontecimientos del siglo XX, el nacionalismo, el fascismo, el comunismo y el exilio. La metâafora de la sombra como portadora de la identidad reaparece a lo largo de toda la trayectoria âepica, un leitmotiv con variaciones, y expresa la confrontaciâon del exiliado con el extraänamiento que atraviesa. La literatura como forma de vida y expresiâon de la identidad es, de hecho, el tema del relato, potenciado por continuas referencias al clâasico alemâan de Adelbert von Chamisso sobre el (S0 (BHombre que vendiâo su sombra (S1 (By fragmentos del mismo. Un collage de citas significativas y notas de lectura sobre la identidad, el amor y la literatura. Al final de la lectura, el lector se sentirâa, probablemente, compaänero solidario del nâomada melancâolico e irâonico que nos acompaäna con humor, escepticismo y su tenaz empeäno por sobrevivir."--

A virtuoso collage novel about narrative, identity, and exile, from international literary sensation Norman Manea

Vanity doubled by vitality, vulnerability mixed in with force, and the fear of dissolution intimately linked with the desperate pride of defeating historical time confer upon Romanian literature a special tension, born from wandering and threat. The 81 writers gathered in "Romanian Writers on Writing" explore this unsettling tension and exemplify the powerful, polyphonic voice of their country's complex literature. The "Writer's World" series features writers from around the globe discussing what it means to write, and to be a writer, in other countries. The series collects a broad range of material and provides access for the first time to a body of work never before gathered in English, or, perhaps, in any language.

A collection of short stories stemming from the Romanian author's detention in a Nazi concentration camp as a child evokes a sense of the horror and absurdity of war and Romanian politics.

Tolea, an eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his job as a high school teacher on "moral grounds", is investigating his father's death forty years after the fact, and is drawn into a web of suspicion and black humour.

At the center of The Hooligan's Return is the author himself, always an outcast, on a bleak lifelong journey through Nazism and communism to exile in America. But while Norman Manea's book is in many ways a memoir, it is also a deeply imaginative work, traversing time and place, life and literature, dream and reality, past and present. Autobiographical events merge with historic elements, always connecting the individual with the collective destiny. Manea speaks of the bloodiest time of the twentieth century and of the emergence afterward of a global, competitive, and sometimes cynical modern society. Both a harrowing memoir and an ambitious epic project, The Hooligan's Return achieves a subtle internal harmony as anxiety evolves into a delicate irony and a burlesque fantasy. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, this is the work of a writer with an acute understanding of the vast human potential for both evil and kindness, obedience and integrity.