By Dumitru Tsepeneag
Translated by Alistair Ian Blyth
ISBN: 9781628972702
Publication Date: 09/21/2021
A director is trying to adapt a short story he once wrote for the screen. The story is about an isolated train station under threat by a giant eagle in a small town where rumors of war are rumbling. But the film shoot is plagued by accidents. The actors and crew don’t understand the script. They argue over its meaning and perhaps come to identify with its subject matter a little too closely. Soon enough reality, such as it is, begins to crumble. A Novel to Read on the Train is a dreamlike and ominous novel by a great European writer—and the first novel he composed in French.
Other Books by Dumitru Tsepeneag
Reviews
“With his metaphors and traps, Dumitru Tsepeneag reminds me of a magician who pulls flowers, animals, and strange objects out of his hat. He lays comical stories over a poignant, and often grim, background.” ―Journal de Geneve
" In his lightness of touch and gleeful panache, Tsepeneag is a cross between the great American Robert Coover and Jean Echenoz, a French original who also blends self-effacing humour with erudition and stylistic daring." —The Irish Times
“[Tsepeneag] induces the sense that memory, time, and consciousness are both mutable and, ultimately, unknowable.” —Elizabeth Hand, The Village Voice
Biographical Information
Dumitru Tsepeneag is one of the most innovative Romanian writers of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1975, while he was in France, his citizenship was revoked by Ceaucescu, and he was forced into exile. In the 1980s, he started to write in French. He returned to his native language after the Ceaucescu regime ended, but continues to write in his adopted language as well. He lives in France.
Alistair Ian Blyth is the translator of many works by Romanian authors, including Teodorovici’s Our Circus Presents, Lungu’s I’m An Old Commie!, and several novels by Tsepeneag, all of which are available from Dalkey Archive Press. He lives in Bucharest, Romania.