أيام تشاوشيسكو الأخيرة

by Patrick McGuinness (ترجمة : سعيد الحسنية)

في هذه الروايــــــــــة يتابع باتريك ماك غينيس …
المئة يوم الأخيرة من أيام حكم نيكولاي تشاوشيسكو ، في رومانيا
ثمانينيات القرن العشرين ويفعل ذلك فـي إطار اجتماعي/سياسي..

يجري سرد أحداثها ووقائعها بصوت راوٍ عليم ، هو بطل الرواية القادم من بريطانيا إلى رومانيا بعد أن تم اختياره لوظيفة معلم ، وما هي إلا أيام ويجد نفسه في عاصمة نصفها مُظلم، وفي دولة بوليسية برفقة رجل ثمل، هو ليو رجل انجليزي استقر ببوخارست قبله يبدو أنه مخبر للسلطة فيكلّف بمقابلته ويخبره بأنه كان مقنعاً جداً في المقابلة، وأن البرفيسور بدوره
يتطلع إلى مقابلته شخصياً …
وأنهم يعتقدون أنهم نجحوا في توظيف الشخص المناسب لهذه الوظيفة ...
ويدرك لاحقاً أن ما ينتظره كان أبعد من وظيفة! ..

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Military History, War, Romania, Military Fiction

477 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 1966

About the author

Born in Tunisia in 1968 to a Belgian French-speaking mother and an English father of Irish descent, he grew up in Belgium and also lived for periods in Venezuela, Iran, Romania and the UK. He currently lives in Oxford and in Wales teaching French and Comparative Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Reviews

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the choice to read this for an English class, I avoided McGuinness's book for two reasons: one, because I'm Romanian, and I was afraid I wouldn't be objective enough, two, because I'm Romanian, and I know how Western authors see countries from the former Eastern Bloc - inaccurately, pityingly, and always in the same manner.

I decided to give it a try during the holidays, though, and I was pleasantly surprised. VERY pleasantly surprised. Despite having a certain rhythm which becomes predictable after the first hundred pages, despite sometimes blatantly forcing witticisms into its dialogues, McGuinness's language is delightful, and so are his subtle references to Romanian culture, his sudden shifts in tense, his organic descriptions of a totalitarian regime falling apart. To anyone saying the book is too bleak, or too exaggerated - nope. It is incredibly accurate and incredibly well researched, to the point where I, as someone who spent her entire life in this country, found out new things about the revolution. It's a book that sits very comfortably on the line between fiction and non-fiction, borrowing from both exactly what it needs.

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

A novel set in Romania during the last months of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, who had a good claim to the title of “Most Odious Eastern Bloc Dictator of the Decade” despite competing in a very strong field. I was attracted to the novel after reading that the author had lived in Romania in the late 1980s, which clearly lent the book authenticity. I can certainly understand why witnessing an intense event like the Romanian Revolution would have led him to write the book. Unfortunately, for me it didn’t succeed in conveying that experience.

The story is told from the perspective of a young Englishman who arrives in Bucharest in the summer of 1989, to take up a job teaching English. He isn’t named and is given only a limited backstory involving an unhappy childhood at the hands of an abusive father. Perhaps this lack of detail contributed to my feeling remote from the character and the events he described. Much of the first half of the book is taken up with descriptions of Bucharest in 1989, such as how ordinary people faced continual shortages of basics like food, electricity, and medicines, whilst the Party elite consumed luxuries in reserved shops and restaurants. Corruption is everywhere, either because of poverty and hunger or, in the case of the Party elite, because of greed. A lot of the text is taken up with descriptions of the destruction of old Bucharest. Ceauşescu had a mania for destroying architectural gems and replacing them with shoddily built tower blocks. The horribleness of his rule is set out, but I felt this part of the novel read more like non-fiction. The narrator’s voice seemed to me to resemble that of a documentary film maker. There wasn’t much sense of excitement or emotional engagement.

The book’s other main character is a colleague of the narrator’s, also a Briton, with the unusual name of Leo O’Heix. Leo is a “fixer” who deals in the black market and has lots of contacts within the Party elite. One of the narrator’s students is also the daughter of one of Ceauşescu’s Ministers. These and other contacts mean that Leo and the narrator have access to some of the country’s top people, who are secretly plotting against Ceauşescu. Some of the situations seemed a bit contrived. At one point the author even works in an appearance by Slobodan Milosevic, supposedly on a visit to Romania. I couldn’t help thinking this was overdoing it a bit.

The main plus point was the book’s authenticity, and it did have some moments. Taken as a whole though I found it a bit leaden.

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfectly researched, crisply written retelling of the end of the war in Europe, spring 1945. Stalin and the Russians pressing west toward Berlin, suppressing dissidents and promoting communists in the 'liberated' countries, Eisenhower juggling Churchill and Montgomery with Bradley and Patton, trying to keep the peace among allies as they cross the Rhine for the final battles. And Hitler, in his bunker, making delusional plans to divide the allies and join the US and Britain in an attack on the Soviet Union.

[Maciek · Rating 2 out of 5]

On December 21, 1989, on Palace Square in Bucharest, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu gave what was to be his final speech. Ceausescu's decision to appear publicly at the balcony of the Royal Palace was a result of his profound misunderstanding of the national mood in Romania, which was finally beginning to collectively rebel against his 24 year rule. The belief that simply by appearing before his subjects, speaking the standard wooden language and promising inconsequential changes (such as raising salaries and pensions by several percent) he'd calm and satisfy the revolting masses was itself a result of surrounding himself only by opportunists and sycophants for decades - people who'd never question any of his decisions, and would offer only growing praise and adoration for his person.

Ceausescu's speech was meant to boost the popularity of his regime - it was meant to resemble his famous speech from 1968 which he gave at the same venue, and where he openly condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and distanced himself from the Soviet Union. That speech was a genuine success, and was received enthusiastically both at home and abroad, in the West - Romania became the first nation from the Eastern Bloc to develop official relations with the European Community, whose leaders quickly jumped on his perceived anti-Sovietism and hoped for Ceausescu to become their man in the East. Romania was the only country from the soviet bloc to join the IMF and have diplomatic relations with Israel; Ceausescu visited Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Richard Nixon visited Bucharest in 1969, marking the first visit of an American president to a socialist country since the beginning of the Cold War.

Only the front rows of the crowd were cheering for Ceausescu now; they were comprised of stooges and party apparatchiks, who were ordered to the portraits of him and his wife and wave the national flags. The real reaction was breeding in the background, where just minutes into his speech the crowd began to chant: "Timisoara! Timisoara!" - name of the Romanian city where just several days before police and the military brutally suppressed an anti-government demonstration. At the time, Ceausescu was not even in Romania - he left for a two-day state visit to Iran, leaving the crushing of the demonstration to his wife, Elena, and their subordinates. In an attempt to silence the growing number of revolting people, Ceausescu raised his right hand and attempted to speak to them directly, and the puzzled expression on his face remains one of the enduring images of the fall of communism in Europe.

The confused Ceausescu was eventually escorted from the balcony by his security; he and Elena were taken away from Bucharest on a helicopter, unable to stop the revolution from beginning. As the army has closed Romania's airspace, the helicopter pilot claimed to be in danger from anti-aircraft missiles and landed on a small country road, forcing the Ceausescus to abandon the helicopter and leaving hem with just one personal guard. The Ceausescus eventually managed to hijack a car and have the driver take them to the city of Targoviste, where they were arrested by soldiers from the local garrison. Revolutionary authorities formed a tribunal and tried both Nicolae and Elena for their crimes against the people of Romania. It was a kangaroo court and a Stalinist trial with many false and overblown charges, and even Ceausescu's defense joined with the prosecution and accused them both of capital crimes. Although Nicolae rejected the revolution as a Soviet coup d'etat and the tribunal as unconstitutional, it was no use - they were declared guilty and executed by firing squad five minutes after the verdict, and more than a hundred bullets ripped through Nicolae's and Elena's bodies - the only violent deposition of government in the Eastern Bloc. Although their trial and sentencing was recorded and broadcasted on Romanian television, the execution was carried out quickly in fear of loyalists rescuing the dictators, and only the last round of shots was filmed, along with the grisly images of their dead bodies. As the Ceausescus were led to their death, Nicolae sang The Internationale; Elena reportedly screamed "you motherfuckers!"

To understand Ceausescu's Romania one must first understand both the dictator and his wife, who both have developed extensive cult of personality around themselves. At first Ceausescu began to be identified with Romania as a whole after his surge in popularity in 1968, as a result of his growing opposition to the Soviet Union. But the person whom Western leaders saw as a possible reformist and what they took to be a possibility of creating a schism in the Warsaw Pact was in fact the result of Ceausescu's visit to China and North Korea in 1971. In China, he witnessed Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, and in North Korea he met with Kim Il-sung, who introduced him to the idea of Juche - political independence along with self-reliance in the economy and self-defense. Ceausescu took great interest in these ideas - along with the personal way both leaders ruled their countries - and upon his return to Romania began to emulate them.

Soon, along with translations of Kim Il-sung, Romanian bookstores were full of Ceausescu's many books - which the media presented as great contributions to Marxism-Leninism; he took a delight in many titles Romanian writers created for him, such as "Genius of the Carpathians". Similarly to Kim, Ceausescu's rise to power from humble origins was presented in a way reminiscent to Romanian folk tales. By all accounts, Elena was just as self-centered as her husband - despite lacking education she had scientists ghostwrite for her so that she could claim to have made important contributions to the field of chemistry,and thought of herself as Mother of the Nation. It was an ironic name, considering the fact that it was her husband's policy which outlawed abortion as an attempt to increase the falling population, restricting access to contraception and forcing women to take monthly gynecological examinations. Birth rates did increase but so did the number of abandoned children, who were subjected to institutionalized neglect and abuse in overflowing orphanages which they shared with the mentally ill.

Both Ceausescus made sure that films and photographs made of them always showed them in best possible image, retouching all "defects", and engaged in open nepotism, prompting Romanians to joke that they were creating "socialism in one family" - a sad joke in a country which Ceausescu surveilled through the Securitate, an everpresent and invisible secret police force which penetrated all levels of society and could have outmatched both the Stasi and the KGB in brutality. In his vanity, Ceausescu even had a special order made just for him - a "Presidential Sceptre", which prompted Salvador Dali to send him an ironic letter of congratulations. The state media, not daring to see the sarcasm, published it as proof of greatness of the country's leader, and his portraits and posters continued to grace its streets and avenues.

Although Ceausescu's opposition to Soviet influence attracted Western powers to Romania and could secure heavy loans on political grounds, poor and inflexible central planning focused on heavy industry led to stagnation of the mismanaged economy, and increased the country's foreign debt 10 times. While Ceausescu managed to secure a line of credit from the IMF and pay the huge debt in 1989, he did so by adopting a disastrous austerity policy which drastically lowered living standards of average citizens, led to shortages and rationing of basic foodstuffs. Cuts in energy and heating left the streets dark and houses cold, but kindled in Romanians a frustration aimed personally against Ceausescu, which ultimately erupted into the Revolution of 1989.

Which finally brings me to Patrick McGuinness's debut novel, .The Last Hundred Days, which was published and made the Booker longlist in 2011. McGuinness does a good job at depicting a city at the gates of a revolution, with a deep disquiet running underneath and something large and defining just one step ahead - history at the verge of the making. But McGuinness's book is a novel, and novels can contain history but ultimately are dramatizations of it - and this is a case where we can't not see it. McGuinness's narrator is an unnamed young English expat, whose arrival at Bucharest is hardly believable (he secured a teaching position without even appearing at the interview) and the whole novel becomes more fiction than fact from there. The narrator comes into contact with Bucharest's elite and the downtrodden without any effort, and is universally accepted and befriended by all of them, instantly integrating into a completely new culture. Other characters - when they don't serve as explanations for ideological points - befriend him, confide in him, even fall in love with him. Which brings me to my next point - the narrator's main Bucharest insider, Leo, is a character who can appear only in fiction: he has almost limitless abilities and connections, and is able to get away with almost everything (in a totalitarian state nonetheless). The narrator's main love interest, Cilea, is a wealthy socialite who somehow develops a romantic relationship with him when she's not taking trips to Paris in her free time. I can accept the existence of such characters and even the fact that the narrator could meet one of them, but what luck did he had to posses to met and become intimately involved with both in a country infiltrated by a secret police and where people froze down in their unheated homes?

Since the novel feature a known historical background we know how it's going to end - we know how the revolution will play itself out, and the only thing is to dramatize it. And there lies my main problem with this novel - although it wasn't meant to be exploitative it borders on being so. Bucharest and Romania at the time are nothing more to the main character - the suffering, oppression and deficiency that McGuinness illustrates are ultimately little more than an exotic adventure from which he, an expat, can always safely return home and parents he escaped from in the first place. There's never any real sense of danger towards the main character, and his feelings remain hidden in the shadows - which robs the whole experience from intended meaning, and gives it a new one, immortalized by the Sex Pistols - "a cheap holiday in other people's misery".

[Zanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

The nameless narrator of this faux-memoir seems to fall from the sky into the last days of the Ceausescu regime and the massive gravitational field of the enigmatic Leo O'Heix, oafish, corrupt, generous bon viveur, embodiment of decadent bourgeois capitalism. This story is his, but as he is The Magician (surely this is one of the six/nine/twelve basic plots?) he needs to be observed in preternatural action and not endowed with psychology.

Like the narrator, Leo has no past. More accurately, they both have painful pasts which do not figure in the story at all; the unwanted histories they have jettisoned tip them into the urgency of the present moment unencumbered. Similarly, the regime (the other protagonist) arrives divested of historical context. In the opening paragraphs, McGuiness effortlessly evokes the grey grinding misery of life in Bucharest with an evocative description of 'totalitarian boredom' and acute collocations like 'malign lethargy'. You can tell he's a poet. This tone-setting done, he spends few words on the suffering of the proletariat, instead focussing on the grotesque luxuries enjoyed by the tiers of the privileged: foreigners diplomats, party members and their families.

McGuiness, again effortlessly, scandalises this reproduction of privilege that features so offensively in non-fictional manifestations of communism. I think of Barbara Demmick's book Nothing to Envy . But while Demmick tells the real stories of ordinary people, presenting an incontrovertible indictment of the North Korean regime, McGuiness appropriates his chosen context for a narrative of heroic individualism, in the personality of Leon and his milieu, in which activism and community are envisioned as haphazard acts of interested philanthropy. Oh no! Am I making the foolish mistake of approaching The Last Hundred Days ideologically? Alas, I am.

I see reviews by Romanians saying this book is accurate, and others saying it is inaccurate, and other non-Romanian reviewers saying it doesn't matter because it's fiction. In my opinion, it does matter: I think it's irresponsible to write inaccurate historical fiction about highly political subjects. But it matters less to me that McGuiness might have misrepresented aspects of the historical context than that he has rather transparently used that context to mount a refutation of the ideas behind socialism.

Of course, the highly visible failure of communism is its own critique! One hardly need do any work, but McGuiness happily goes out of his way, not contenting himself with regularly (and haha yes rightly in my view) ridiculing historicism in author voice: "You know the old joke: with communism the future is certain, it's just the past that keeps changing" he creates two characters, Petre and Trofim, who rebel against the regime but defend socialist ideals, and has them articulate their positions in order to dismiss them. Petre's argument is bookended with derisive assertions of its wrongness, and is presented so weakly I want to call it a straw man, while Trofim's, though stilted, is more convincing:

Do you think that you who live in capitalist countries would believe in the right to a job, a decent wage, free health and education if socialism had not shown you the way? The welfare state? The National Health Service? Socialism showed you that what your employers and bosses sometimes gave you out of paternalism or pangs of social conscience was in fact life's necessities, the minimum. You only think of them as rights because of socialism. Until socialism they were merely privileges or random acts of charity or luck. And that is before I talk of social mobility... Capitalism owes its better self to us'

McGuiness is having none of this. His narrator brushes the 'outburst of idealism' aside and a couple of paragraphs later recharacterises it as 'fundamentalist' and then has hero Leo call it 'sophistry', 'bollocks' and 'theology'. Just in case you were even thinking about sucumbing to the slightest socialist leaning. So for me, this is literature in service of capitalist ideology. By stripping its portrait of Romania of historical detail it deflects any attempt to explain its miserable disintegration by any argument except the total bankruptcy of leftist thought. The specific brutality of the Ceasescu regime, its obscene excesses of propaganda lies and the death of culture, expressiveness, opportunity and any spark of joy that makes life actually worth living it imposed on the Romanian people even when it did not actually murder, torture or imprison them, is all laid at the door of socialism generally, to be weaponised as needed.

Right I'm done with that, sorry. I think I've used all my political chips, but I'll just have a jab at the presentation of gender and relationships while I'm here. The narrator mainly functions as witness-to-Leo's-antics, but he has a couple of affairs which serve to illustrate felt response to the stranger-than-fiction reality around him. The first relationship impedes his autonomy; he is used by his partner (though the whole affair and especially the yucky sex scenes work as fulfillment of male fantasy - we are meant to identify entirely with his perspective). Thus, it cannot be authentic because it violates the norms of heteropatriarchy. His partner, retaining her autonomy, is consistently presented as amoral and self-centred. The second relationship is presented as authentic because he responds emotionally; this partner surrenders her independence to him so all is right with the world.

The book starts off well, slightly overdone, in a way that seems quite appropriate: the humiliation and boredom of life under the regime is leavened by its sheer weirdness: the hint of baroque excess gives the text its charm, softens us up to be seduced by Leo. By the end, McGuiness seems to have lost momentum, and I was bored. Perhaps it's deliberate! Like everyone still alive, I was relieved when the revolution came. But, starting with the corpses of Timisoara, there are too many nameless victims serving this tale. The people Leo's actions affect negatively are always invisible, while everyone he helps individually commands our sympathy as they do his. But of course, life is like that, there is only a choice between bad Leo (selfish capitalism) and worse Ceausescu (totalitarian socialism), isn't there?

[Ozymandias · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly standard account of the final 100 days of Nazi Germany. It does exactly what books written not long after events should do: it gathers evidence via interviews and personal examination and places it into a broader context. Like a lot of popular histories, the book is more about individual narratives than big picture analysis. Witness testimony is used to reconstruct individual events representative of the whole area of conflict. While this is the same approach taken with Toland’s brilliant The Rising Sun, the book has none of that one’s grand narrative drive or revisionist theme. The fire just isn’t there. Nor does it cover novel material. Rather, it mostly just reorganizes commonly-recorded facts into an overall narrative. While the topic covered was interesting, I found that you could find the same account in a dozen other works.

The obvious weakness of the book, given the period in which it was written, is that there is little discussion of the Russian side of things. While Russia’s push on Berlin gets a lot of attention, it’s mainly told from the German point of view. Obviously, Toland wasn’t granted permission to access Soviet archives. One result of this is that Stalin seems even more deceitful and malicious than he was. I don’t doubt, for example, that in installing his own government in Poland he thought he was honoring his agreement at Yalta. As he saw it, Churchill had conceded him control over most of Eastern Europe and then asked for political cover so that he could keep the Polish government in exile in London on side. How could a paranoid and amoral man like Stalin living in a totalitarian state imagine Churchill meant all that guff about “free and fair elections”? To him, the Western allies’ anger at his behavior was just a sign that they were trying to turn world opinion against him. The world looks different when you have no principles.

The book’s heroes are occasionally thrilling, but the villains aren’t particularly loathsome. The Nazi bigwigs, who can usually be relied upon to be suitably nasty, have already committed most of their crimes and aren’t in a position to achieve many more. Hitler is a rather sad old man who’s lost touch with reality. Himmler’s so milquetoast and indecisive you wonder how this pathetic wreck could ever have been the most feared man in Europe. About the only figure who is reviled is Stalin, and apart from the Yalta Conference we rarely seem him (as opposed to hear people talk about him).

It’s kind of interesting to me to see how willing Toland is to toss the horrible crimes done by individual Nazis aside. In part this is just the nature of such a book. We don’t need a polemic against Hitler when we see him ranting about the grand Jewish conspiracy to his dying breath because the story is meant to be detached and scientific, because most of his crimes were committed before the end of his Reich, and because it is taken as read (although it must be said that the focus on grand military/political theater without even a glance at the millions held in concentration camps until the very end gives a decidedly outdated and distorted impression).

But Toland also argues (in the notes) that for a lot of leaders in the Third Reich there was no choice but to obey orders. The younger generation of Germans (meaning the children of the ‘60s) forget this when they attack members of the war generation for crimes they participated in but did not advocate. I’d have said the following generations have come down even harder against the war generation, for all that resistance leaders like Sophie Scholl and Claus von Stauffenberg have been claimed as national heroes, and most works nowadays emphasize just how pervasive the racialist views that permitted foreigners to be butchered like cattle really were. It would be interesting to know what Toland would think of that. For my part, I can’t help but notice that the chief reason German generals (or the German populace for that matter) abandoned the Nazi leadership was that they realized their warmongering had led them to disaster. Not that it led them to commit horrible warcrimes.

[Anni · Rating 5 out of 5]

The bleak, paranoid atmosphere of Ceausescu's regime in Romania is evoked as authentically as only someone who was there could make it. This semi-fictional narrative relates the final days of a corrupt, decaying society, where racketeering and trafficking flourish, and playing the system is necessary for survival. Under constant surveillance, everyone has hidden motives and no-one is to be trusted - a fine recipe for gripping, chilling suspense.

Extract:-
Leo told me after the first frosts: 'The Cold War, ever wondered why they called it that? It’s not just all that bollocks about icy relations between East and West. The cold is a weapon here, they use it just like they’d use a gun or water cannon ... you remember what Napoleon said about being defeated by General Midwinter? Well around here Winter’s a colonel in the Securitate ....'

Reviewed for www.whichbook.net

[Liviu · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the kind of novel I always dread it will turn this way but have to read since it's one of the few written by western authors about Romania; I have no idea how the author did his research but the country and period he described is just wrong - maybe he researched Stalin's Russia of the 30's since the 1989 Romania he describes here reads that way and it was not like that - as i lived through those times as a college student and they are still seared in my memory even after 22 years I found the travesty of this novel funny in the North Korean movie way on occasion - ie so bad to be funny in an absurd way.

Before getting the book I checked the sample - excited, the period that most likely was the most important in my life as from it sprung all the possibilities of the future - novel, longlisted for the Booker - and the writing style - a first person narration - was compelling enough but the factual mistakes started accruing at an alarmingly fast rate - the description of the Romanian car Dacia (wrong), the Bucharest blackouts, the food lines (they were much more prosaic - and again both not so bad and worse than described depending on occasion - than the author described and while here I could understand a little the exaggeration as literary license, it still jarred badly since it presaged the ridiculousness of what followed)

Then the university professors as janitors - so ridiculous, that may have happened in the 50's but in the 80's things were different - I would say subtler though they were sometimes cruder too

Wrong naming all over the place that is again so sloppy (Capsia instead of Capsa or at worst Capsha if you want to transliterate the sh, Capsia just sounds ridiculous, Cilea I am not sure what it stands for but it is no Romanian name - maybe Clea was intended which kind of fits the heroine as one of those ridiculous pretend names affected by people like her, though even that sounds a little wrong - or maybe Cleo from Cleopatra, another sort of unusual fancier name but still around...)

And I could continue on page after page how the author got everything wrong factually and in spirit; the oppression was as mentioned much subtler and on occasion much cruder than the Stalinist menace, the party leaders and the secret policemen gave no fig about anything except their power and seats, communism meant obedience to the First Family and nothing else, Marxism, Leninism and the like were given at best lip-treatment though they generally were marginalized in favor of Ceausescu's Thought which was the only essential ideology combining National Greatness with slogans about Power to the People, the Soviet Union was regarded as an enemy pretty officially and all traces of Stalin had been eradicated long ago...

In late 1989 everyone expected the regime to collapse (there was a movie adaption of a classic 19th century work November the Last ball - movie banned pretty fast for its allusion to the November Party Congress which was indeed the last ball so to speak, that encapsulated the atmosphere) though of course nobody knew how it will happen since like with the avalanche, it still takes the little stone to start it...

The book simply does not get it and it's a pity the author did not choose something he understood better since literary speaking it is reasonably compelling to the end but it is about an imaginary country not the real 1989 Romania as advertised; sadly...

[Jaidee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars....awesome novel debut...almost flawless

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Hundred Days are those of Ceausescu’s Romania. The real historical events leading up to the Romanian Revolution are a scaffold for the fictional narrative. The story is told from the vantage of an expat Brit who was just looking to get a job and it happened to land him there during the last few months of the regime in 1989. The author, Patrick McGuinness, lived in Romania at the time and so would seem to have an insider’s authentic impressions. He is also a poet and writer, and professor of literature at Oxford, and it is his wonderful prose that elevates this novel.
“As a power-saving measure, museum visitors were organised into groups and the lights in each room were turned on as you entered and off as you left,…It was like a tide of darkness following you, engulfing room after room behind you as you went.”
“Trofim greeted everyone as if he had heard of them before, as if they came to him cresting the wave of a happy reputation.”
“This is what surveillance does: we stop being ourselves, and begin living alongside ourselves. Human nature cannot be changed, but it can be brought to a degree of self-consciousness that denatures it.”

The book was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011, and I was struck by the similarities it shared with another Booker nominee that year, Snowdrops by A.D. Miller (which unaccountably made the leap to the short list). Both books could be described by the same paragraph: An English expat ends up in (Romania, Russia), not entirely of his own volition but wants to make the best of it and make a good impression. He falls for an extraordinarily but mysterious beautiful woman, who may, or may not, be what she seems. Could she be a double agent? The characters in his life are pragmatic idealists, or are they?, and he learns quickly that life in (Romania, Russia) is definitely not what it appears to be on the surface. Corruption, hypocrisy and violence are the currency of (Romania, Russia). Despite the hardships and privations, extraordinary by British standards, he begins to feel part of his new home country. But even that might not be enough to withstand the extreme turmoil that is about to happen.

I think this is the kind of book to which Snowdrops was, in vain, aspiring to be. I even idly wondered if the Booker judges actually meant this book to be the shortlisted one, but got tripped up by a series of clerical bunglings (Dame Stella imperiously waves to the underling clerk and says, “put this book about the Brit duck-out-of-water in a communist country on the short list; it will add a bit of variety.” )
There are a rich assortment of characters, reminiscent of the cast of Casablanca, and some of the descriptions are funny. “Their parties, an endless round of cocktails and booze-ups,…the circuit as a whole is…’a doppelgangbang: where largely identical people fuck each other interchangeably’” His beautiful girlfriend is dismissed by a cynical friend as “Ah, Cliea — a girl of many layers; layer upon layer of surface…”

This book gives us illuminating glimpses into the deep darknesses of humans, and we see ourselves.
“For all the grotesqueness and brutality, it was normality that defined our relations: the human capacity to accommodate ourselves to our conditions, not the duplicity and corruption that underpinned them. This was also our greatest drawback — the routinisation of want, sorrow, repression, until they became invisible, until they numbed you even to atrocity.” (Of course, we like to think of ourselves as the more noble and heroic characters in the book, not the venal corrupt ones that are more akin to our least favourite acquaintances.) “…The system was breaking down into its constituent parts, paranoia and apathy, and as the centre started to give way the two were left to engage in their great, blurred, inconclusive Manichean struggle. Apathy and paranoia: two drunks fighting slowly around a park bench.”

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very very atmospheric -- a wonderful job of conveying the isolation, decripitude, mania, hidden corners, and mad luxuries of a nightmarish Bucharest at the height of paranoia in 1989. The telling details are lovingly rendered so that you feel the city around you yet are never bored by the description. The city is the most wonderful and noteworthy character. And the "plot" is fairly clever and well realized. The issues come in (and this book was almost a 2 star instead of 3 because of them) for two main reasons: a) people speak in seminars -- explaining political background or observations rather than allowing ideas to emerge from conversation, interaction, and the atmosphere and b) who the main character -- an utter cipher -- is, and how he manages to win the friendship of all the key (and opposing) figures in Bucharest at the time, is never explained. Our narrator is such an enigma that we have no idea whatsoever why the beautiful and wealthy Cilea (in love with someone else) would take up with him romantically, why her father, a leading Communist, would befriend him, why a grand old man like Trofim would have him as a confidante, why Leo, the magnetic heart of their little circle, would adopt him, etc. etc. etc. We are meant to believe that he's a working class English 21 year old with 1 year of uni, and an otherwise apparently invisible prior life as the obscure child of unloveable parents, and yet that he finds himself at the epicenter of Bucharest's intrigues, adopted and favored by nearly all, including the elites. McGuinness would have done better to fill in the blanks a bit more -- after a while that absence (and absence of sense) at the novel's core grates.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Toland writes clearly and is able to move from the high levels (Churchill and Roosevelt, Hitler) to the details of individual soldiers on the battlefield. He has performed an important task of interviewing hundreds of people (from Generals to civilians fleeing the Soviet Army). He weaves a massive canvas of the final days of the Third Reich.

Thank-fully he does not accuse Churchill and Roosevelt of betraying Poland at Yalta. He points the finger clearly at Stalin and the Soviet Union for the suppression of Poland (and for that matter the rest of Eastern Europe). As Mr. Toland demonstrates the promises for free elections and the participation of the London Poles in the new government were never kept – in fact the London Poles were incarcerated upon their arrival in Moscow.

The description of Mussolini’s last days is lurid. The adoration of Hitler by several of the faithful in the bunker is nauseating.

One aspect missing from this vast account is the liberation of Holland. There were descriptions on events in Denmark and Czechoslovakia and the liberation of Vienna. Mr. Toland writes at a personal level and captures well those harrowing days.

[Sheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this is one of those books that I want to like and feel like I should like, but then I just really hate it. I mean, I STRUGGLED to force myself to pay attention and just finish the damn thing. Really. It was hard slogging through it. And yet, I learned a bit and McGuinness has some great commentary (examples below) and so it deserves a good rating. I mean, it might be a 5 start book and I am just a nincompoop who struggled with staying awake to read it. But on the other hand, isn't it McGuinness's job to make it more damn entertaining? I mean, this isn't a text book!

This was on awards list and so ended up on my to-read without me really having much of an idea what it was about. When I first picked it up, I was quite intrigued for a few reasons. I was 12 in 1989. I remember the "fall of communism" and more explicitly the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I was just a kid. I knew that commies were bad and that Russians were evil and that we were good. And then I grew up and became a sociologist and learned a whole lot more about Marx and started to realize that it was implementation of communism through a police state that was really so awful. And didn't really stop to think back through about what I knew or didn't know about the Eastern bloc at the end of the 1980s. Probably because I didn't really know much of anything.

Except one other small(ish) thing. In March of 1991 my aunt and uncle went to Romania to adopt a baby. When they got there, the baby they were supposed to adopt was no longer available and they waited around and met some people and eventually got a different baby and came home after like a month. They had all sorts of horror stories about their month in Romania. The left home with extra suitcases filled with lightbulbs and cigarettes to use as bartering tools. And my uncle came home with the funny note that Romania had "John Wayne toilet paper" because it was "rough, tough, and took no shit". Yep.

So that's all I knew about Romania and so I learned a bunch of specifics. I had heard of Ceausescu, but really I didn't know much other than he was a dictator.

Unfortunately, McGuinness's book is not much of a novel. It reads more like a biography than a novel. There is no real plot other than the unfolding of the revolution. On a personal level, the no name main character does not really compel the reader and doesn't have much of a personality or any real stake in anything (the other characters even remark upon this) and so it is most like a textbook with some back hand comments.

But the comments are good: "life in a police state magnifies the small mercies that it leaves alone until they become disproportionate to their significance; at the same time it banalises the worst travesties into mere routines." and

"the circuit as a whole is, as he puts it 'a doppelganbang: where largely identical people fuck each other interchangeably'."

"Madness is not living in a fantasy world--she has lived in her fantasy world quite happily for years, perhaps we all have. Madness is the space between the fantasy world and the real one, where you find yourself cut off from both. There's no way back from that."

Overall I felt like I learned quite a bit about the end of Ceausescu's reign in Romania, but it was hard slogging and didn't feel like a novel so much as a chore.

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çavusesku dönemi Romanya’sı edebiyatta çok fazla işlenmeyen bir tarih. Hele ki bir İngiliz’in bu konu hakkında yazması hiç beklemediğim bir şeydi. Ancak yazarın Çavuşesku döneminde hatta rejimin yıkılmasında bir kaç yıl önce Bükreş’te yaşadığını öğrenince taşlar yerine oturdu.

Kitap hayatının karmaşık bir döneminden geçen ve başvurmadığı bir iş ile yolu 1989 baharında Bükreş’e düşen bir İngiliz’in, Çavuşesku iktidarının çöküşü öncesi gözlemlerini ve yaşadıklarını içeriyor. Bu kitap hakkından ne düşüneceğiniz, ne amaçla okuduğunuza bağlı olarak değişiyor. Zira Çavuşesku döneminin yıkım süreciyle ilgili detaylı ve gerçek bir tarih okumak istiyorsanız size uygun değil. Çünkü yazarın kendisinin de ifade ettiği üzere, kitap daha çok kurgu üzerinen ilerliyor ve yarattığı karakterlere benzer insanlarla tanışmış olsa da kitaptaki yansımaları biraz daha abartılmış halde.

Benim yakın tarihe dair kurgularda açmaza düştüğüm bir durum bu kitapta da yaşanıyor. Hele ki 1989 gibi oldukça yakın bir tarih ve bu tarihin canlı tanıklarının aktarımlarıyla detaylı bilgi edilebildiğiniz bir devrimin kurgusu söz konusuysa oldukça riskli bir alan. Çavuşesku dönemine dair biraz fikir sahibiyseniz gerçek tarihle ters düşen anlatımları rahatlıkla yakalayabiliyorsunuz. Ancak genel bir çerçeveden bu döneme ait bir kurgu okumak isterseniz sevebileceğiniz bir kitap. Ben bir noktadan sonra Çavuşesku’yu vs kenara bırakıp siyasi polisiye olarak okuduğum için sevdim. Çünkü kitapta ortaya çıkan durum Çavuşesku’nun karakteristik yönetiminden öte Sovyet anlayışı ile Kuzey Kore anlayışının harmanıyla ortaya konmuş bir tiranlık tanımı ve bu tiranlıkta yaşanan yasa dışı oluşumlar. Açıkcası yazarın bu döneme dair çok net bilgileri ve yaşam tecrübesi varken, devrim öncesi son 100 gün yerine, yaşadığı döneme dair daha ayakları yere sağlam basan bir kitap yazsa çok daha memnun olurdum.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-En su momento, ejemplar y de referencia. Ahora no tanto.-

Género. Historia.

Lo que nos cuenta. Visión casi periodística, con momentos novelados, de los últimos cien días de Segunda Guerra Mundial en el frente europeo a través de un gran número de participantes en los hechos. Libro también conocido como “Los cien últimos días” (sí, en serio).

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Toland's The Last 100 Days reconstructs the end of World War II in Europe, as the Third Reich battled for survivals and the alliance between the United States, England and the Soviet Union began to crack under the pressure of eminent victory. Toland's book reads, essentially, as a massive work of reportage; writing in 1965, he interviewed literally hundreds of participants on all sides, capturing the war from the highest military-diplomatic summits to the experiences of frontline soldiers, POWs and civilians. Thus Toland minutely recreates momentous battles, from the American storming of the Bridge at Remagen to the Red Army's capture of Berlin; the experiences of German civilians suffering from Anglo-American bombs, abuse, looting and rape from vengeful Soviet soldiers and the madness of their own leaders; disputes over strategy between Eisenhower, Montgomery and their subordinates; the fabled Conference at Yalta, FDR's sudden death and the early stirrings of the Cold War, even as Western and Soviet troops meet victorious on the battlefield. There's also an oddly affecting portrait of Benito Mussolini's last days, as the once all-powerful dictator becomes a hapless fugitive hunted by Allied troops and Italian partisans, then betrayed by his German allies. And, of course, the mad Gotterdammerung of Adolf Hitler in the Berlin bunker, refusing entreaties to flee or surrender, perishing along with his Third Reich. Toland is most effective simply reconstructing events and sketching his protagonists; when he presses a personal thesis (arguing, for instance, that Eisenhower can and should have outraced the Soviets to the Berlin) the book feels unconvincing. Still, though, a valuable narrative of the end of History's Greatest War, a picture of heroism and villainy, triumph and frustration, a manmade apocalypse that laid one totalitarian regime low, only to initiate a confrontation with another.

[Barry McCulloch · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic book. McGuinness manages to straddle the fact/fiction border with an engaging, easy to read narrative.

The characters are engrossing and relatable and the narrative effortlessly absorbing as the fall of Ceaucescu’s Communist reign comes to a bloody end. The real stand out in this novel is the language, not surprising given the author is also a Poet. From the very first page you realise you are in gifted hands:

“In the West we’ve always thought of boredom as slack time….Totalitarian boredom is different. It’s a state of expectation already heavy with its own disappointment”.

And the feeling never leaves. It is very clear that this was a labour of love, with every sentence painstakingly constructed. I was quite literally blown away by it.

This is not just a book about the fall of Communist Romania, although if this is why you drawn to it then you will not be disappointed. It vividly paints the everyday struggles of communist life and the all-seeing Securitate.

Yet, it is much more than that. It is a story of a young man searching for meaning in the world; fleeing home from his own domestic totalitarian life. I cannot recommend this more. One of the best books I have ever read.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look 'behind-the-scenes' at the last 100 days of World War II in Europe. Mostly about The Big Three vs. The Germans (Italy and Mussolini get a mere two chapters!), with all the usual players: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, Montgomery, Truman, Dulles, Smith, Harriman, Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Speer.

Political wranglings, military manoeuvrings, agreements made & broken, 'displaced persons', refugees, the usual war-time atrocities (mass rape, looting, killing, you know...), POW camps, concentration camps, executions, suicides, partisans, and let's not forget the controversial fire-bombing of Dresden. Have I left anything out? Probably. How does the song go? 'We didn't start the fire, it was always burning, since the world's been turning...'

The potential for the human race to be absolutely cruel to itself seems to know no bounds...

[K Marcu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting character perspective chosen by the author - it provides good insight into the destruction Ceausescu inflicted: razing neighborhoods and century old churches/buildings, his complete disregard for the needs and freedoms of the Romanian citizens, & the volatile placements of those who were in the higher ranks. I believe there could have been a larger insight given into the average person of the state - not as flashy as his apparatchik & expat characters (although these are very well done); maybe more of the percolating discontent of the general citizen that led to its boiling eruption that December day. I think the main character is portrayed as someone older than his 21 years, in ways it just doesn't come across realistic.
A well written book for sure, especially for someone who is trying to understand the atmosphere prior to the revolt.

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

"THE LAST 100 DAYS" offers the reader compelling views - from both sides --- of the last 100 days of the War in Europe, from blunting, containing, and ending the final German offensive in the West (the Battle of the Bulge) to V-E Day (May 8, 1945). John Toland is at his best in crafting a compelling and poignant story of war in its terminal stages.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read at least two of Toland's books previously, I picked this one up with some confidence and was not disappointed. Toland, a professional writer, not an academic historian, effectively weaves into his grand historical narrative enough small illustrative examples that the reader is repeatedly reminded of the personal, human dimension of war. Much of his material is original, based on his interviews with survivors.

[McNatty · Rating 4 out of 5]

An average story set in the middle of a once in a lifetime revolution makes this novel unique and valuable, hence the awards. Granted McGuinness is a wordsmith and awfully talented but I feel this book does lack a fundamental story line. It feels very much like McGuinness is just going through the motions and perhaps that reflects his age at the time. One feels he would probably rather just get laid than understand the inner workings of the communist party. There is nothing wrong with that but if it was me I would probably do my best to disguise it. McGuinness openly admits he's a voyeur not completely to grips with his comprehension of the unique situation he has stumbled into. However this is very much the story of a young man fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. I don't quite understand why the historical facts were distorted and some critical ones brushed over but perhaps that does serve to reinforce the book as fictional. Whether they are his own or they are simply reworded McGuinness does comes out with a string of eloquent quotes which have stayed with me. His removed nature does make this book enjoyable and comical yet a little frustrating. I felt the humor was a little eerie, perhaps this is a natural reaction to someone who was actually there opposed to someone explaining it from distance. Overall, like much of the reviews I have read the book is a conundrum. It had the potential to be incredible but for reasons not really understood the author has told it in his own very unique impersonal style confusing many readers.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, Zanna (see below) has effectively written my review for me - scroll down, read it, it's very good, but I'll make some brief points.

Firstly, I know nothing about Romania apart from what I gleaned during episodes of Challenge Anika in the early 90s-orphanages? Disabled children? Yeah, that's it. The context, though, is something McGuinness is desperate to get in, though, often in a bit of a hamfisted way ('once she's had the miscarriage, though, he was subject to police questioning because in 1989 in Romania inducing an abortion was a crime....' I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Trust us to get it, Patrick!) and is gripping stuff. Hard to believe it happened in our lifetimes (if it did-there seems to be a bit of a debate raging here as to whether it did or didn't) and has certainly inspired me to read up more on the Ceausescus.

My main issue, though, was with style and credibility of the narrator. Like, firstly, he's parachuted in as a lecturer and he's 21. Really? He 'falls from the sky' as someone else on here has said to Leo's den of iniquity and gets involved in shady deals helping young idealists escape Romania's oppression. Err, what exactly does he have to offer these escapees? He seems to stand around on the sidelines drinking and smoking dope and not doing a right lot, really. And the sex scenes: bleurgh. 'I lifted up her skirt and fucked her quickly.' And then she came. Yeah, right. Course she did, buddy. Annoying.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu was one of the communist era’s nuttiest and it was perhaps fitting that it ended far more violently than those other dominoes that toppled over two decades ago now. The leader’s very public final days and execution are covered in the last few pages of the volume and if the whole story is a familiar one, the detail of life in this most paranoid of societies is what really shocks – the stationing of huge circular saws underneath the surface of the Danube along the border with Yugoslavia perhaps the most horrific example of a nation that had lurched into extreme totalitarianism and murder.

This book from a veteran of those fateful days is an odd mix and reads pretty much as non-fiction reportage at times. A vast number of characters are real life ones and I found it impossible to treat this as a ‘novel’. How much is true and how much is poetic licence is debatable – and the naive hero of the book isn’t particularly likeable – unlike some of the Romanians attempting to preserve their dignity around him. In all though, it’s a compelling account of the Ceauşescu regime if one that should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt here and there.

Oh - and note to publisher - don't whack a sign saying 'Booker Prize 2011' on it without saying if it was on the Long or Short List.

[Zoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

As is evident from some of the novel's reviews, both seen here and elsewhere, this book raises some interesting issues relating to the complex relationship between history and fiction. Set within a specific historical moment - the final (100) days of Ceaucescu's rule - the novel tells the (fictional) tale of a young Englishman's time in Bucharest. Offered a job at the city's university, despite having failed to attend an interview, and being presented on his arrival with a complimentary degree, it could be argued that the plausibility of both the plot and its associated depiction of Bucharest is instantly undermined; certainly, throughout the narrative, incidents occur that do little to imbue the novel with verisimilitude. While some reviewers have seen this as a criticism, however, this is precisely where my interest in the text lies. Even though it's clearly written and marketed as a novel, because its setting and context are verifiable, some readers seem to want to critique the text as if it were an historical account, questioning the authenticity of the minutiae of the narrative and subsequently attacking it for its fictionality - a strange charge to be levelled at a work of fiction...

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous account of the most momentous three and a half months in human history.

If one were to form an impression of this book based in the first 60 pages or so, one might conclude that Toland has bitten off more than he could chew, that the thing is too scattershot, and possibly too random in attempting its broad canvassing of the war from the lowliest prisoner and civilian to the heights of the leadership, but that would be wrong. Once this thing kicks in, it becomes un-putdownable -- a 60-horsepower jeep, driving hard through all kinds of mud to afford a clear and seemingly complete view of the terrain at hand. From the vividly told meetings of three giants: Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt at Yalta --their every gesture and modification of reaction in the negotiations conveyed -- to stories like the one where a Russian prisoner takes an American prayer leaflet to the latrine because he'd not seen "such soft paper in years," the level of detail matches any great novel you can name.

It's a magisterial achievement, one of the ur-text books on the Second War War, and rather than belabor the point, I'm simply recommending it without reservation.

-eg/kr '19

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I managed to read just over half of this book before I completely lost interest in the characters. The initial setting was very bleak. Nothing was described without a succession of dreary, drab adjectives. I understood that the author wanted to create a soulless landscape but I felt it was overblown and exaggerated. The characters never really sprang to life for me. I did wonder at one episode where the main character decides at the last minute not to take a flight and is happy to depart knowing his case and belongings will finish up circling the carousels at Heathrow. A bit unrealistic I thought, despite it leading to a short consideration of the nature of loss people and lost stuff.
A minor point but on a few occasions the word "multiply" was used as an adverb (pronounced "multi-plee"?) but on each occasion it pulled me up short. "...the texture of multiply resurfaced tarmac." "...a tattooed, multiply earringed gypsy..."

Always disappointed not to finish a book but this was too much of a struggle.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am amazed at the number of negative reviews this novel has attracted on GR - it made me question how much I liked and enjoyed it. But then I was also amazed at the snide comments about the author - clearly those making them had not bothered to even read his back-story which infuses his other books and writing and has drawn me to his work.

I think this novel was marvellous, but then I am old enough not only to have seen the fall of Ceausescu but to have endured his ghastly 'state' visit to the UK - it is still an open question for me if his or Trump's was the nadir of British self respect. I also thought the novel was good because it showed the hypocrisy at the heart of the Romanian revolution and how many of the old communist apparatchiks remained in power which created the corruption that led to horrors like the Colectiv nightclub fire (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colecti...).

The novel still sits on my shelves and I would happily read it again.

[Andra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that attracted me from its first pages, in large part because I was browsing it while I was still in London and so a little home sick, but also because of the writing style which made me feel literally at home between its pages.
As an Eastern European person myself I felt that I needed to read it so as to see whether the author's nationality had in any way affected the way in which the last 100 days of communism and my country were to be presented. I am happy to say that it did not or, if it did, it did so on very few accounts. While I believe it is well-written and presenting an interesting side of the story, viewed through the eyes of an adopted citizen of Bucharest and many such others, I cannot escape the feeling that it would have been a much better read in English rather than Romanian. But all in all, a pleasant and eye-opening book.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

this chilling book with its iiconruous humor will fills us in on everything we really didnt want to know about life in a collapsing totalatarian state.