The Black Envelope

by Norman Manea, Patrick Camillier

A splendid, violent spring suddenly grips Bucharest in the 1980s after a brutal winter. Tolea, an eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his job as a high school teacher on "moral grounds," is investigating his father's death forty years after the fact, and is drawn into a web of suspicion and black humor.

Genres: Fiction, Romania, Romanian Literature, Novels

329 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Norman Manea is a Jewish Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He lives in the United States, where he is the Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer in residence at Bard College.

He left Romania in 1986 with a DAAD-Berlin Grant and in 1988 went to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship at the Catholic University in Washington DC.

Manea's most acclaimed book, The Hooligan’s Return (2003), is an original novelistic memoir, encompassing a period of almost 80 years, from the pre-war period, through the Second World War, the communist and post-communist years to the present.

Manea has been known and praised as an international important writer since early 1990s, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has received more than 20 awards and honors.

Born in Suceava (Bukovina, Romania), Manea was deported as a child, in 1941, by the Romanian fascist authorities, allied with Nazi Germany, to the concentration camp of Transnistria in the Ukraine with his family and the entire Jewish population of the region. He returned to Romania in 1945 with the surviving members of his family and graduated with high honors from the high school in his home town, Suceava. He studied engineering at the Construction Institute in Bucharest and graduated with master’s degree in hydro-technique in 1959, working afterwards in planning, fieldwork and research. He has devoted himself to writing since 1974.

Manea’s literary debut took place in Povestea Vorbii (The Tale of Word, 1966), an avant-garde and influential magazine that appeared in the early years of cultural liberalization in communist Romania and was suppressed after six issues. Until he was forced into exile (1986) he published ten volumes of short fiction essays and novels. His work was an irritant to the authorities because of the implied and overt social-political criticism and he faced a lot of trouble with the censors and the official press. At the same time that sustained efforts were made by the cultural authorities to suppress his work, it had the support and praise of the country’s most important literary critics.

After the collapse of the Ceaușescu dictatorship, several of his books started to be published in Romania. The publication in a Romanian translation of his essay Happy Guilt, which first appeared in The New Republic, led to a nationalist outcry in Romania, which he in turn has analysed in depth in his essay Blasphemy and Carnival. Echoes of this scandal can still be found in some articles of the current Romanian cultural press.

Meantime, in the United States and in European countries, Manea’s writing was received with great acclaim. Over the past two decades he has been proposed as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature by literary and academic personalities and institutions in the United States, Sweden, Romania, Italy and France. Important contemporary writers expressed admiration of the author’s literary work and his moral stand before and after the collapse of communism: the Nobel laureates Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Octavio Paz, Orhan Pamuk, as well as Philip Roth, Claudio Magris, Antonio Tabucchi, E. M. Cioran, Antonio Munoz Molina, Cynthia Ozick, Louis Begley and others.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book baffling in parts so I did what I never do which is to look at others' reviews to see if anyone else had figured it out. Much of the plot, such as it is, is about an elderly man who lives alone and seems to be searching for documents related to the political turmoil that ruined his father’s career. However, he himself was run out of a job as a professor and now works as a hotel receptionist in this eastern European communist environment. The novel is set in Romania and translated from Romania.

So what did I find in others’ reviews? (Overall on GR it’s a 3.7 – pretty low.) Bill said he slogged through it but it was a struggle. Daniel Polansky said it was hard to review and remained obscure to him. Ugh gave up on it. (Ugh.) Nathan Eilers found it vague and confusing. Wm. said it was exquisite but baffling. Stela said it was well-written but exasperating and hard to love.

So why slog through it?

To me its main value is that it is almost a primer or a manual of what life was like during the days of the repression of personal freedom under communism in Eastern Europe. As if communist repression were not enough, the population in Romania also suffered from the whims of the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu from 1967 to 1989. He was tyrannical even by Stalinist standards. (He and his wife were shot by firing squad in 1989 after a one-hour trial.) The people also suffered under an overwhelming and insidious bureaucracy that permeated their lives. So here’s that primer:

The office environment. At work there is constant gossip and rumors about the Party that you have to follow closely for “hints” of what’s going on. Favoritism is shown to Party members. Political leaders who used to be drawn from “workers” are now members of the intellectual class. Your manager calls you at home on your day off to chit-chat. It can only be one of two things -- a joke or a warning? The best thing you can have is a friend at a high level; the worst thing is an enemy at high level.

The doublespeak of the bureaucrats is Orwellian. Surprisingly, if you are a brave soul and want to risk all, you can act weird, irritate people, and say politically dangerous things because your co-workers will assume you must have higher-up connections or you wouldn’t dare act that way. So, our professor openly talks of his brother who defected to Argentina. Your day is marked by petty suspicion, petty backbiting, petty deception, petty acts of treachery committed by petty, shriveled, crushed souls. And boredom. Don’t forget the boredom.

Suspicion. It’s an age of suspicion. Everyone is subject to blackmail from the old days of WW II. There are informers and spies. Even the spies assume they are being spied on. Everyone has a file so everyone lives with constant anxiety waiting for the bureaucrats to get around to looking into their file and their “past.” Many people have things to hide from WW II. We’re not told what these are. So people have changed their appearance and often their names. Throughout the book there are reflections on Hitler and Mussolini and snippets of the history of the Germans taking over the country.

Paranoia. It’s an inept bureaucracy, so it might take a couple of years, but at some point you know you will lose your job or get thrown out of college. But the bureaucracy is also inept enough to let you get a new job or to re-enroll – for a while anyway. The professor is paranoid, constantly looking in shop windows, using the reflection to see if he’s being followed. He walks out of his way and doubles back to throw people off his track. He changes buses and trains for no reason.

More suspicion: People don’t answer their doorbells or their telephones. The professor meets a woman. He knows she searches his wallet while he sleeps. He searches her apartment while she sleeps. He finds nothing suspicious. This makes him even more suspicious. At times he wonders if he should even be having the thoughts he does because technology may have advanced to the point where “they” are reading your thoughts like radio waves.

It is forbidden to talk to foreigners on the street. Talking frankly generate suspicion, so only innocuous conversation occurs. You never talk in a taxicab. Even when an earthquake happens there is no radio news because the dictatorship and the bureaucracy take days to figure out what they should tell people.

Shortages and lines. The shortage of coffee and other staples is constant. Many stores are closed for “stock taking” – maybe for weeks. Every store that happens to be open has a line. People give directions by saying “go to where the line starts for such and such a store.” You join a line just for the heck of it, not even knowing what’s in stock. The lines are self-policing; a semi-riot starts when a clerk attempts to give a friend of hers more than the allowed ration of potatoes.

Trains don’t come. You wait while three buses crammed full of people pass you by. Two hours later a parade of empty buses streams by. A woman tutors foreign college students for free because the gifts they give her – liquor, American cigarettes, coffee -- are more valuable than cash. The main character always carries matches with him even though he doesn’t smoke because you never know when you need them for power outages, missing light bulbs and dark corridors.

The general public is always asking people who have been to other countries if people there are happy. Can they possibly be as miserable as us? “They” is in constant use. Lovers use the refrain “They can’t take this away from us.” Boredom, gloom and suspicion prevail. Patients in the clinic are obsessed with getting their medical codes changed in the byzantine health care system because a re-categorization might increase their medical benefits or retirement disability benefits. People accept the principle of guilt by association. If your uncle gets in trouble with the authorities, you will too; after all he’s YOUR uncle. This is not considered an injustice.

Frightening stuff.

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Reading, still reading? Sign of unhappiness, all this reading, right? "

Most of The Black Envelope reviews posted on Goodreads express puzzlement or confusion or simply annoyance. It's not difficult to understand their frustration, for the novel is one of those exasperating books that, although very well written, prove hard to love, probably because of their too obvious intellectuality. In other words, they ask for a second degree reading (in Umberto Eco’s terms, that is), since a first degree reading would require a reader always on the lookout (and besides with a passion for jigsaws) since the main technique used is, as Matei Calinescu correctly observed, the cryptic writing.

Published for the first time in a Socialist Romania, where every presumed subversive idea had to be disguised in one way or another to pass censorship, The Black Envelope has become thus a wonderful illustration of Borges's observation that censorship is the mother of metaphor. The novel language is amply metaphorical, often turning into allegory:

The confusion of a rheumatic morning. The tomcat coiled in the pipe, muttering confusing warnings. The key turning rusty words in the rusty lock…

The stylistic mastery is astounding, displaying a refined imagery that brands Norman Manea's style:

• Suggestive descriptions, of desolate streets or architectural failures, that appear to prepare the harrowing of hell of the Beauty:

The alley opens to the left, to the refuge of a failed villa. Gates, columns , balconies , the vain rush of upstartness, the nostalgia of a style. The heterogeneous preparing the compromise with the barbarians, the corruption of the form, the assault of the rot.

• flash characterizations, practicing the caricature :

The poor informers are not even servants of the devil, they haven’t got this higher rank. Only brutes swarming into the swamp called present, that’s all.

• graphic images built like a Dali painting through the combined effort of the metaphor, the personification and the epithet :

The words were left in the inflated air of silence. They had not managed to vocalize, they were still gathering energy, postponed in potentialities.

• ironic sparks, glowing unexpectedly through a comparison ("deaf, deaf as a radish!"), an oxymoron (" ... her frail giant appearance") or an ingenuous use of the wooden language ("...developing siren" – created after developing country) to burn themselves out in a depressing comical way, in a perfect example of what Romanian people means by the aesthetic of the laughin’--cryin’:

An old woman in front of the windows is straining to read the ad. She is hanging, tired, like a chicken in a pleated grey bag. She is faded, bent, curious, dead, charitably wrapped in the standard bag.

In fact, the whole novel (and this to the delight of the Romanian reader and the ignorance of the foreign one) is in a permanent intertextual dialogue with the greatest Romanian master of this type of irony, Caragiale, from the title that remind his famous A Lost Letter to the bitter end, a subtle reinterpretation of a short story, An Easter Candle.

Yes, something is definitely lost in translation (but is it not always so?) but the universal reader can, however, refer to Kafka or Orwell, or Robe-Grillet for the modernist structure, or even Homer, for some graceful images like this one: "On the eyelids, the infinite zephyr , the long cool hands of the morning. "

The greatest achievement of the novel comes, in my opinion, precisely from what first grade readers (interested, let’s say, first of all in what is narrated) complain about: the narrative discontinuity, the fracture of the epic logic, designed to illustrate not only the hero’s progressive mental confusion, but also the day-to-day nightmare of a world that, scared and lost, refuses nonetheless to wake up screaming, a world of deaf-mutes by choice, for fear of being shut up in the hospice of the truth haunted only by Tolea:

The deaf-mutes’ Party meeting, the deaf-mutes’ wedding, the deaf-mutes’ volleyball match. The deaf-mutes’ faces, hands, clothes , anger, laughter , tears. The deaf-mutes’ parade groups, knitting groups, weightlifting groups, the deaf mutes’ orgy and drunkenness and prayers.

As Matei Calinescu beautifully says in his afterword :

"The Black Envelope is ultimately a meditation on the incapability of the exile, on alienation and desolation in a suffocating totalitarian society, in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion, in which discretion and privacy are brutally denied. "


Note: This is an (approximate) translation of the Romanian review of the novel that a friend of mine suggested (Thanks Ema, for pulling me out of my proverbial laziness). That is why the quotes may (significantly) differ from the English edition!

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obra difícil, casi imposible, a ratos hipnótica, casi siempre caótica, torrencial, deslavazada, este fresco sobre la Bucarest de los 80 es también una sátira sobre los desastres de la dictadura de Ceaucescu y sobre los fantasmas del pasado fascista, aún demasiado presente en una continuidad grotesca del despotismo. Quizás sea casi ilegible en castellano pero deja entrever destellos de una prosa febril, barroca y riquísima.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

i managed to slog my way through this whole book, but it was quite a struggle. i kind of liked the writing, but didn't really understand the book at all. and the plot, if there was one, was incomprehensible. i had plans to get a couple of his other books, but don't think i will bother now.

[Daniel Polansky]

I've written before in this space about how foolish it is to decide a book is bad because you didn't understand it, and more generally of the terrible (and terribly frequent) error in imagining that no one could possibly be smarter than you are. Black Envelope is a difficult novel to review, in so far as despite a serious, determined effort, large portions of it remained essentially obscure to me. Part of that is deliberate – to the degree that there is a plot, large portions of it are never explained, nor does it come to any sort of concrete resolution. Likewise, the reader is obviously meant to be experiencing, to some limited degree, the same feelings of frustration, futility, and lingering madness are as the characters, laboring beneath the oppressive regime of Romanian communism. Still--is it fair to complain about a book being too gnomic, when that is so clearly the author's intent? If so, then I am hereby officially complaining about it. What I got of the book did not make me sufficiently enthusiastic to give it a second reading which might have clarified more of it. Or to put it another way – there is surely something of value here, but you are almost certainly not going to be the one to find it.

[César Carranza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raro raro, en realidad si es difícil y bastante difícil de leer, me parece que va más meta de lo que dice ser, transmite la sensación de desorientación, caos y no saber que está pasando, muy propio de lo que habla

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Citești, mai citești? Semn de nefericire, lectura, nu?”

Majoritatea recenziilor Plicului negru postate pe Goodreads de către cititori străini exprimă fie nedumerirea, fie confuzia sau enervarea. Nu e greu de înțeles frustrarea lor, căci romanul este una dintre cărțile acelea iritante care, deși foarte bine scrise, sînt greu de iubit, probabil din cauza caracterului prea intelectual. Altfel spus, necesită o lectură exclusiv de gradul al doilea (în termeni umbertoechieni, vreau să zic), în contextul în care o lectură de gradul întîi ar presupune un efort mult prea susținut din partea unui cititor prea leneș (sau prea lipsit de talent rebusist ☺) de a citi necontenit printre rînduri chiar dacă realizează încă de la început că principala tehnică folosită este, așa cum observa și Matei Călinescu, scrierea criptică.

E știut, desigur, că romanul a apărut pentru prima dată în România socialistă, unde orice idee presupus subversivă trebuia camuflată pentru a trece de cenzură. In cazul Plicului negru, acest lucru a fost un incontestabil cîștig, o minunată ilustrare a observației lui Borges, că cenzura e mama metaforei. Romanul este plin de metafore sugestive, care se transformă adesea în alegorii:

„Confuzia unei dimineți reumatice. Cotoiul înșurubat în burlan, mormăind avertismente confuze. Cheia răsucind cuvinte ruginite în broasca ruginită…”

Măiestria stilistică a lui Norman Manea este uluitoare, și din acest punct de vedere, lectura este un izvor nesecat de imagini de o înaltă ținută artistică:

• descrieri în care ratarea arhitectonică, de exemplu, pare a pregăti apocalipsa estetică:

„Aleea se deschide în stînga, spre refugiul unei vile ratate. Porți, coloane, balcoane, graba vanitoasă a parvenirii, nostalgia unui stil. Eterogenul pregătește compromisul cu barbarii, coruperea formelor, asaltul putregaiului.”

• caracterizări fulgurante, exersînd caricatura:

“Bieții informatori nu sînt nici măcar slugile diavolului, nu au acest înalt rang. Doar jivine ale mlaștinii numite prezent, atît.”

• imagini complexe, construite plastic ca-ntr-o pictură de Dali, prin efortul combinat al metaforei, al epitetului și al personificării:

„Cuvintele rămăseseră în aerul umflat al tăcerii. Nu izbutiseră să sonorizeze, își tot adunau energia, amînate în potențiale.”

• exerciții de ironie si umor, răsărind neașteptat în text prin cîte o comparație („Surdă, surdă ca o ridiche!”), un oximoron („… gigantica ei gingașă făptură”) sau o întrebuintare inedită a limbajului de lemn („…pițipoancâ în curs de dezvoltare”), atunci cînd nu sînt de-a dreptul dezolant comice, perfect exemplu de ceea ce înțelege românul, de la Caragiale încoace, prin rîsu’-plînsu’ estetic:

„O bătrână, în fața vitrinei, se încordează să citească reclama. Atârnă, obosită, ca o găină, într-un sac cenușiu, cu pliuri. E veștedă, curbă, curioasă, moartă, învelită, caritabil, în punga standard.”

De fapt, întregul roman este (și aceasta spre deliciul cititorului român și nedumerirea celui străin) în permanent dialog intertextual cu Caragiale, începînd cu titlul, continuînd cu principala linie narativă (povestea unei scrisori) sau cu teoria conspirației dezvoltată de eroul principal care-l parodiază (voluntar!) pe conu Leonida și terminînd cu o scenă care trimite la O făclie de Paște.

Da, nu e ușor pentru cititorul străin să urmărească ideile în lipsa acestor informații, deși nu imposibil, pentru că se poate, în schimb, referi la Kafka, sau Orwell, sau Robe-Grillet pentru structura modernistă, sau chiar la Homer, pentru unele imagini pline de grație ca aceasta: „Pe pleoape, infinitul zefir, mîinile răcoroase și lungi ale dimineții.”

Din punctul meu de vedere , însă, cea mai mare reușită a romanului provine tocmai din ceea ce cititorii de gradul întîi (interesați, care va să zică, în primul rînd de ceea ce se narează) îi reproșează: discontinuitatea narativă, fracturarea logicii epice, menită să ilustreze nu numai confuzia mentală progresivă a eroului ci și coșmarul cotidian al unei lumi care, speriată și pierdută, refuză totuși să se trezească urlînd, o lume de surdomuți care au ales să fie astfel poate tocmai de frica de a nu fi internați în ospiciul adevărului bîntuit numai de Tolea:

„Ședința de partid a surdomuților, nunta surdomuților, meciul de volei al surdomuților. Chipurile, mîinile, hainele, furia, rîsul, lacrimile surdomuților. Grupele de defilare, grupele de tricotaj, grupele de haltere, orgia si beția si rugăciunile surdomuților.”

Așa cum frumos spune Matei Călinescu în postfață: „Plicul negru este în ultimă analiză o meditație asupra incapabilității exilului, a alienării și a dezolării într-o sufocantă societate totalitară, într-o atmosferă de teamă și suspiciune, în care discreția și intimitatea sunt în mod brutal refuzate.”

[Héctor Genta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Temo la verità e non so neppure più se la voglio.

Tolea è un uomo distrutto dal regime: accusato di condotta immorale e per questo degradato da professore in un liceo di provincia a portiere di un albergo ad ore, si trova a rischiare il licenziamento anche da lì e così decide di prender ferie per indagare sul passato del padre ucciso o suicidatosi anni prima dopo aver ricevuto una misteriosa busta. Dietro a questa trama Manea intesse un libro con un intertesto difficilmente apprezzabile pienamente dai non rumeni (io arrivo giusto ai barbari di Kavafis, non certo ai riferimenti a Caragiale…), un romanzo articolato su diversi piani di lettura, con la narrazione che oscilla continuamente tra realtà e immaginazione. Una cortina di fumo e metafore che l'autore è stato costretto ad alzare perché l'opera potesse superare il vaglio della censura di Ceaușescu e al tempo stesso per far arrivare al lettore il suo messaggio in bottiglia.
«Perché non entriamo tutti in prigione? Questa è la domanda. Perché non abbiamo questo coraggio» domanda ad un certo punto il protagonista «Beh, dove siamo?» è la risposta fulminante del suo interlocutore.
Ironia amara, consapevolezza di vivere in una gabbia, in un regime che imponeva l'annullamento della personalità dei singoli nelle sabbie mobili della mediocrità, con la folla chiamata a recitare il ruolo di comparsa nella grande farsa della vita sotto il dominio del Conducător. Un mondo fatto di sorvegliati e sorveglianti, tutti remissivi, sottomessi e sonnolenti, adattati ad una normalità che però non era normale. Cosa rimane a chi come Tolea/Manea decide di sottrarsi al giogo comunista? Ben poco, se non la fuga dentro se stessi: indossare una maschera e percorrere una strada stretta sempre sul limite dell'alienazione. Tolea cerca, inutilmente, nel passato una risposta alla situazione presente, come se comprendere possa essergli di qualche aiuto, costretto poi ad ammettere di temere la verità:
«Ma io vado oltre e dico: temo la verità e non so neppure più se la voglio.»

[Nathan Eilers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Manea's dark postmodern novel shows a lot of promise, but it is ever vague and confusing. Yes, this is the effect Manea's after because he wants the reader to have a sense of life in Fascist Romania; however, his technique is so effective that the book is a long series of events in a labyrinth of bleak darkness.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

How anyone can make progress through this is beyond me. The narrative is all over the place, the plot remains a promise glinting on the horizon but never reached.

I've read a few Romanian writers and, in this instance, I can't help but wonder if the fault in pinning the whole thing down into something resembling structure is partly down to the translation.

[Ugh]

I had high hopes for this, especially after the guy in my local bookshop told me when I took it to the till that he was also reading it, and that the reading was good.

But, it's almost completely incomprehensible. Who is who, what they're doing and why, chronology, narrative - I couldn't make head or tail of any of it. I persevered for 80-odd pages, then decided life is too short. Soon to be seen in an Oxfam bookshop near me...

[Mish Middelmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably wouldn’t have persisted to the end of the book if I wasn't (a) just back from my third trip to Romania and feeling very attached to the country and (b) well over 50 years old. It’s so dreamily written that I seldom knew who was speaking – or even who was in the room, let alone whether it was live action or a dream, or whether happening “now” (1980s Bucharest) or 40 years before that.

Getting close to 60 helps me be with situations where I barely have any idea what is going on. And to enjoy the few clues from atmosphere, tonality and repetition as to what might be going on and which dimension of dreamspace we are in.

Just returning from Bucharest gives me the energy to sit with the characters through some torrid times. Pervasive is the sense of decay, disappointment in the Party, people spying on each other, using connections and bribery to get every little thing done. Endless favours and trading on favours – reminds me a bit of shopping in Nairobi.

One of the reasons I like Romania is that it feels close to home. Haven’t you heard people in South Africa saying just what Manea’s Irina says?

“Are we worse than the rest?” Yes, she would have answered, and then she would have said no, not knowing which of the two replies was the sadder.

For South Africans who think our problems are unique, Romania helps bring perspective.

Is it so simple, that communism has the result of denying the people their basic needs? Certainly the description of Gostat, the people’s store in Bucharest, reminds me of wannabe-socialist Zimbabwe and seriously-socialist Mozambique in the 1980s: “Vegetables, chickens, eggs – they ought to be in the Gostat hall, where there’s nothing but jars of pickles.”

Is there a story amongst all the atmospherics? I am not sure. The blurb says it is about an eccentric middle aged intellectual investigating his father’s death forty years after the fact. There were certainly lots of eccentric people, and lots of investigating, but I couldn’t detect linear time or logic to it. Rather like a lot of life.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Questo, solo questo, la nobiltà degli ultimi malati in grado di registrare l'avaria del mondo, la rottura e gli scricchiolii, ignorati da coloro che si sfiancano per mantenere il ritmo della commedia che continua a cercare un finale." (p. 87)

[Ana Stankovic · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the very few books that I couldn't finish and I am usually very patient with books that have no plot or are difficult to read (for whatever reasons). This one was more like 'Hi, I'm Norman, look at how convoluted and confusing I can be and you'll think it's art.' And it's a shame, it could have been such a great book considering the subject matter (not that he went very far with it in the first third of the book) and the Romanian politics of the time.

[Dearbhla She-Her · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was an absolute struggle. Utterly bewildering to understand whether the action is actually happening or remembered or imagined or dreamt or a combination of all of the above. Exquisite writing but I only stuck with it in the expectation of a pay-off at the end. There wasn't one.

[Răzvan · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8AO6...
Puterea ficțiunii îți vine și din vis
„E o capcană anotimpul?” Norman Manea, „Plicul negru”, Polirom, 2024 ( citEști )

Uite că o carte românească îți face o idee în ceea ce privește construcția realității. În „Plicul negru”, Norman Manea spunea ultima poveste înainte să părăsească România în anii '80. Iar căderile nervoase sunt un mod în care descriem azi și slăbirea limitei dintre vis și realitate. Dar scriitorul care și-a refăcut cariera în Statele Unite plasează în literatura română acest model pe care schizofrenia sistemului nu a reușit să îl consume.

„Ai fi reîntâlnit, acolo, la cotitura șoselei care urcă spre oraș, fata morgana”. Norman Manea, „Plicul negru”, Polirom, 2024 ( citEști )

Norman Manea s-a născut la Burdujeni, în 1936. Familia lui a cunoscut deportarea în Transnistria în 1941, după ce România a intrat în război. A debutat cu romanul „Captivi”, în 1970. În 1986 a primit o bursă de un an în Berlinul de Vest. Era și anul în care apărea după multe probleme cu cenzula romanul „Plicul negru”. Remarcat de Henrich Boll, Manea a continuat din 1988 să locuiască în Occident. A ajuns cu o bursă Fulbright în Statele Unite. La New York l-a cunoscut pe scriitorul Philip Roth și au rămas prieteni până la moartea acestuia, în 2018. Și după 1989 Norman Manea a continuat să fie ținta reproșurilor naționaliste, printre alții din partea criticului Alex Ștefănescu. În 2017 a primit Premiul Colegiului Bard.

[Dani Dányi]

I've been told Manea is a prominent writer and this looks to be an interesting read, but I was soon deterred by a lot of very stilted dialogue in what appears to be a roughshod translation that would have needed thorough proofreading. Not much justice done to this novel - I'll just leave it alone.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mai bine citesc un roman de Cărtărescu

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo mejor es el retrato de la sociedad rumana en los años 60, aunque haya que esforzarse para entender la mitad de las cosas.

https://liblit.com/norman-manea-el-so...

[M Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Forma ucide complet conținutul.

[Clare]

HS could review... intellectual but appeal for our readers?

[Hesper]

Plicul Negru, polirom

[Ruby Tombstone Lives!]

I'm mostly obsessed with this cover. Blurb shmurb - bring me that cover!

[Dada]

Odustajem. Čini mi se kao pokušaj da se kompliciranjem prikrije nemoć.

[Justin Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Requires patience, but this book is amazing.