Pitch

Mosilor Street, the modern thoroughfare of a Bucharest that struggles so hard to appear occidentalized and yet doesn't quite manage to: something Balkan, Levantine lingers in the atmosphere of the streets, in spite of the concrete ten-floor blocks, of the road with

excerpt  Is that what it says? dashed Redhead at Tindei, grabbing him by the jacket's lapels. Does it say I've been to the vineyard? No. . . not that. . . you were just. . . mentioned as a. . . as an example! Tindei answered frightened, almost chocking and with

excerpt  VI. MONDAY, 8 TO 9, GERMAN When I was in the first grade, I flunked French, German and Romanian. I used to spend my afternoons barefoot on the pitch, sweating, short-sighted, playing oina. [1] I had become famous for the lightning rapidity with which I would catch

The two students, Andrei Banica and Tudor Leru were in a hurry. That's why they had taken the shortcut. Leaving the highway that was taking a detour on the bank of the river Aries, they decided to climb up Vanatu, the mountain bordering on the river like a huge flat

It had been three days since the wind had been blowing from the east, the earth had dried up, and in the thicket from the edge of the village, on the bank of Siret, the cornel trees started to bloom, yellowish. Dumitru Onisor's youngest son took out six sheep to graze

excerpt While they were rushing on horseback towards Curtea de Arges, the boy was thinking about Voiena. He could not work out if he still felt something for her. He remembered only the taste of her kisses and the hot softness of the girl's cheek, pressed to his, while

Winters in Ramnicu Valcea were quite mild in those times, though there was plenty of snow (I guess this is the cliché of those whose childhood memories are blurred by their excessive subjectivity); anyway, they unfolded following a certain ritual: at the beginning of December

excerpts Master Vucea had no servants. Apart from his cook, we were his only servants. Those of us who were poor and were not dressed German style figured on his purchase list. When he needed to decide who would go to the market place and who to the grocer's he called

from the Teachings of Prince Neagoe Basarab to His Son Teodosie At some point, time will thwart and jostle us unto the realm of things eternal and unalterable glory; for death betides this our life all the glory of which will turn to mockery and disgrace, since many of

Upon hills huddled together,Upon rugged fields of heather,On a grey November morning,Autumn happened without warning.  Skeletal, long-limbed, berserk,Sprinkling nature through the murkWith a branch of poison oakWielded with a spiteful jerk,Autumn's spreading all aroundAs

excerpt  3. THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES OF STING AND STUNG Sting and Stung came into being in a jar of mustard, on the very first morning after I'd dreamt of serpentine road bends and devils. Had it been necessary to invent a realm for them to come forth from – a

On the arm… downstream. Facing a grove with sparse trees, the Danube pauses in an endless lake, segregating at the bottom. Silvery waved, the Saint George Arm rushes to the right – a dead arm, with no fishermen's boats on it, only a decrepit Turkish town the likes