Puppa Russa
Dies estexcerptsHe would kiss her and caress her breasts clutching them (as if her breasts were mere rubber balls), and he couldn't figure out just how much cheap male instinct, and how much true passion, was hiding behind his gestures. Those were the gestures of a
Blinding: The Left Wing
excerpt The following days, Mioara took the girls for a walk in Chishmigiu Park and treated them on a boat ride (the driver of the black car had rolled up his sleeves and was rowing across the lake, giving the ladies nice smiles from under his pointed moustache). Later
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From the point of view of yesterday's or today's reader, it is for sure – yet again! – a matter of code: one accepts it or not. If the education and the cultural concepts we operate with intuitively tell us that certain art forms are not tolerable, that certain
Mrs. Pipersberg's Boarding House
The book about fleshexcerpt I absolutely have to tell you in detail everything that happened in my wedding bed, on which we lay down as though on an operating table, Ferdinand Sinidis grumpily intervened. I really want to stick to the subject, although it might seem that
Return To The Interwar Bucharest
excerpts So closeSuddenly, the interwar people make the body visible: men are allowed to shave off not only their beards, but also their moustaches – a facial change that overthrows an aesthetic canon with centuries-old resistance – and women, punished and ridiculed
The Uprising
excerpts Titu Herdelea found out about the divorce from Nadina during their trip by train. He wouldn't believe it. It was only ten days later that Grigore's words confirmed it for him. And then he exclaimed in a sad tone of voice:She was, nonetheless, such a nice
Ways Of Seeing
Minority ethnic groups have usually developed some separate cultures within the larger framework of the majority. Their particular language and specific customs generally single out such societies. From the cultural point of view, the main characteristics of a minority society
Hutsuls And Their Embroideries
Hutsuls or Huculs, a group of Ukrainian highlanders, live in the Carpathian mountains, to the South-East of the Boykos, a region bordering on the territory of the Romanians. They differentiate themselves from the surrounding Slavic peoples by physiognomy, and by their traditional
My Grandfather Mehmed Ali
My grandfather Mehmed Ali was an old-fashioned Turk. He wore a long beard and the traditional Turkish costume. Each morning he would sit down next to the charcoal, the earthenware pot filled with live coals, sip his coffee and puff his long-stemmed chibouk. He would often
The Violin Player Ion Voicu
It is hard to say when the Gypsies came to Romania for the first time, and then settled for good, but the oldest documents date from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the royal charters mentioned the fiddler slaves, sold alongside the dependencies and objects from
The Gypsies
Nowadays, the Romanians' principal obsession is the Gypsies, who make the Romanians feel as if they were living in a castle under siege. Almost all crimes are attributed to Gypsies, whose population seems to be rising every day. Although the figure given by the 1992
Jewish Identities In Interwar Bucovina
There were Jews in Bucovina even before its existence as a separate province. As early as the 18th century, some Jewish families in the German area looked for a better life in this northern part of Moldavia, which subsequently became Bucovina. Here they were given more protection