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The early-20th-century major Romanian art is not a block, but a very particular construction of intertwined cultural layers. One could not affirm that the most fertile and valuable Modern cultural period of this country was characterized by a certain, homogenous Romanian

South Pacific, December 1999 To be a Romanian writer (therefore in the minority) in New Zealand! Ibi patria, ubi – wife. In New Zealand, I think about the confluence of our lives. We come from so far apart, we meet unexpectedly, we link our lives, our fates together.

excerptStanding in front of the Corso building on Calea Victoriei one day, he felt someone's familiar gaze follow him from across the street, as if to catch his eye. He crossed over, as though answering a call, and discovered a picture of Ann among several other portraits

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. P. B. Shelley When I stare at a fixed point upon the wall at length, it sometimes happens that I no longer know who I am, nor where I am. On such occasions I experience my lack of identify from afar, as if for a moment I had become a

When King Béla of Hungary decided to invite the Saxons to settle in Transylvania, the land had been severely depopulated by the Mongol invasion. The Germans came from the dry lands of Northern Europe and found here what must have seemed to them sort of a Promised Land.

I first heard of the persecution of Christians when I was in the second form at primary school. Mr. Salmen, our teacher, told us that people had been thrown alive to the wild beasts and that they had gone to death with pride after agonies of pain. Much later, I happened

1Not you, Allen Ginsberg,nor you, the Jewish God of Revenge,nor his five-thousand years old people,shall hear my Kaddish,but you, Gentiles, shall hear it,here,in Europe. I, the uncircumcised,a child of the baptized childrenof a thousand years, -before your eyes I grew a

Visiting cities, a consumer tourist practice, is usually presented in the same image wrapping like shopping in a boutique, or attending to a show: one goes for the glossiest package, the funniest label, the wildest excitement vouched for. As a tourist product, a city is

I've always been fascinated by this city. Still, I can understand it doesn't easily translate to others. Here is a list of things one should try to perceive as charming, although - by all standards - they don't qualify as such:1. Filth. It is the quintessential

After my first visit to Bucharest, in the mid-eighties, I returned to my native province with a splitting headache; I recounted the details of this anecdote elsewhere* – anyway, they had to do with two mugs of beer and a few mititei – spicy burgers – swallowed on a

excerpt I am going to tell you of things that happened back in 1960 or 1961, when I was still a little girl, no more than 12 years old. I was living with my family in Moşilor Street, in one of those queer houses, with the second floor protruding a little, with two very

excerpts NOISES OF THE CAPITAL For reasons I cannot exactly explain, the flow of ideas circulated by the independent press has strikingly dwindled to a mere trickle. One can only put it down to the times of fatigued irritation we are living through as we wait for the much