The Return

by Petru Popescu

This poignant memoir chronicles the novelist Popescu's return to his homeland of Romania, a country he had fled, with the aid of John Cheever and other American writers, because of Communist censors in 1975. Traveling with his wife and her parents, who survived Auschwitz, Popescu feels the weight of the two foremost social forces exerted on Eastern Europe in this century: Communism and the Holocaust. And as they visit old friends and family -- from Prague to Bucharest -- the family confronts its dark memories of suffering and the transformation of their homeland and is forced to painfully examine its own place in history.

Genres: Romania

378 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1997

About the author

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petru_Po...

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a compelling memoir that describes a young writer's coming of age in Ceausescu's Romania and decision to defect to the US. A great work for understanding the psychological effects of Communism and Romanian history. A bit long-winded though.