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Writing an oral history of a ten-year-old child may seem like a perfectly absurd enterprise any day of the week. The social experience of an individual of ten would not recommend an approach of this kind. With such a person it cannot be a matter of immediate memory. Hence

I once experienced a terrible fright. I woke up one day to discover a different world from what I knew it to be, more clear-cut, more plainly divided into complementary colors and opposite moral categories. It all looked like in a naive painting: clear and graphic. The only

The jurist Matei Monorai lives nearby. If you'd hear him plead in court, you would not hesitate to call him Matei Golden Mouth. Ambrozie is on his way over, to ask Matei to plead for Vornicu, who has been sentenced to death. He arrives. Matei`s kids are playing outside,

excerpt Mother and I were working in a chocolate factory. My mother's husband was not allowed to work. He had to leave the country regularly and apply for asylum again and again. He and my mother always talked about how to make some money. We wanted to steal chocolate

Ever since I had known him (and there are many, many years since then, almost four), Georgica is profoundly dissatisfied with the fact he doesn't have a moustache, like every man, and isn't allowed yet to manage by himself. Why, Georgica wonders, why do you have

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

Due to a perverse intellectual precocity, Barutzu confuses literature with lard. . . You'll get a D in Romanian! Daddikins shouted at him, offended in his pedagogy. Barutzu feels no emotion whatever. He aberrantly lacks the common sense of merit, the patriotism of class

I was never a child, I never had childhood… warm, golden days of puerile frenzy, the long-lasting serenity of innocence, the surprise given by the daily discovery of the universe, what do all these mean to me? I know nothing of them, or I no longer remember anything. I

excerpts CHAPTER I How had the members of the Cherry Blossom Club gotten to the town of D. ? That was not a difficult one to answer. First, the little town was not very far from its twin, where the members of the Cherry Blossom Club lived. Then, as it often happens, one

Radu TUDORAN's (penname of Nicolae Bogza) Anchors Away!, a very successful novel, later made into a film (aka Full Sail, 1976, directed by Mircea Mureşan - click to see trailer here), competing in nautical erudition, plot and length with Jules Verne's The Children

excerpt A NIGHT OF WAKING After the dinner party we go out into the hospital courtyard. Dusk is descending. A strong smell of carbolic acid tickles our nostrils. The boys are gathering round me. I tell them: Look. Let's all go to the cemetery. What should we do there

excerpt 2 JUNE 1877 My mother has written to me. Her letter took two weeks to reach here. A long, tender letter, such as only a mother can write. Pieces of advice and fears, events back home and thoughts about the war, and then more advice… She thinks I am still a child.