By Dumitru Tsepeneag
Translated by Patrick Camiller
ISBN: 9781564789013
Description
Though best known now for his novels, this collection of pre-exile short stories by the renowned Romanian author and “onirist” not only show Dumitru Tsepeneag at his best, but provide a glimpse into the secret history of surrealism uunder the brutal regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu. In these stories, life is both banal and bizarre, on the verge of breaking down, like a film loop played once too often, with the hot glare of irrationality always waiting to burn through. Looking forward to Vain Art of the Fugue and back to Breton, Waiting is a subversive delicacy.
Biographical Information
Dumitru Tsepeneag is one of the most innovative Romanian writers of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1960 and '70s, he and the poet Leonid Dimov led the country's only literary movement in opposition to the official socialist realism. In 1975, while he was in France, his citizenship was revoked by Ceauescu, and he was forced into exile. In the 1980s, he started to write in French. He returned to his native language after the Ceausescu regime ended, but continues to write in his adopted language as well. He lives in France