Mircea Cărtărescu’s Nostalgia is one of the key works of twentieth-century Romanian fiction, winning the Romanian Academy prize when it was first published in 1989 as The Dream. Those were the dying days of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime, and this initial publication was a shorter, censored versi
Ion Cristofor is an established figure in Romania – a poet, literary critic and translator, and a member of the famous ‘eighties generation’. His poetry has been translated into many languages, but this is his first appearance in English. Somewhere a blind child is a selection of his poems tra
Ana Blandiana is considered one of the most influential poets in Romania. In fact, she is a kind of legend there, often compared to Anna Akhmatova in Russian literature and Václav Havel in Czech: a formidable writer and a political figure at the same time. This reputation is proved for me by this p
In the foreword to Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion, a collection of six translations by Jozefina Komporaly, theatre director Faynia Williams points out that ‘[t]he very title that describes the plays as Dramaturgies of Subversion should arouse the interest of those working in Britis
Excerpt (Mihaela and Pavel are actors. The character of Pavel is to be played by a female performer; Oana in the original production). PAVEL Hey, why don’t you have faith in yourself? It’s clear to see that you don’t. MIHAELA What do you mean? PAVEL You’re… inhibited on s
Romania has long been an ‘outlier’ in Europe, a Romance-language island in a sea of Slavonic, peculiarly vulnerable to the political whims of foreign powers – the Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, and, in the last century especially, the Germans and Russians (not to mention the British and French);
