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The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return & Revolution
A Romanian poet-in-exile returns to his native country in the wake of the 1987 revolution that overthrew communist dictator Nicholai Ceausescu, and examines the changes in the country and their effect on him
249 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1991
About the author
Andrei Codrescu
164 books152 followersAndrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, and NPR commentator. His many books include Whatever Gets You through the Night, The Postmodern Dada Guide, and The Poetry Lesson. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 7, 2010
Arriving in San Francisco for the almost-annual visit to friends in the Bay area, I spent the first night at the home of Tom and Caroline Miley. As usual, Tom had a number of books he wanted me to check out. From among their number I picked out this one as my stepbrother had, years ago, spoken very highly of the author as an NPR essayist.
The contents of this book are indicated by its subtitle. Codrescu, a Romanian who had left the country as a youth, returned after the revolution. In part it's his story with hosts of reminiscences comparing then and now. It is also, however, enough of a history of Romania to account for why he left and why, thanks to the revolution, he was able to return. Finally, its a sad commentary on the actual nature of the change in government.
The contents of this book are indicated by its subtitle. Codrescu, a Romanian who had left the country as a youth, returned after the revolution. In part it's his story with hosts of reminiscences comparing then and now. It is also, however, enough of a history of Romania to account for why he left and why, thanks to the revolution, he was able to return. Finally, its a sad commentary on the actual nature of the change in government.
April 7, 2008
The book was published only two years after the revolution, and yet Codrescu seems to have had a really solid perspective on the then-fairly recent events. He's a great writer. Never a dull moment in this personal/political narrative.
October 27, 2017
Charades on Desolation Row
When I visited Romania for a month in 1979, I saw a beautiful green land of geese and flowering apple trees, ghostly old Transylvanian hill towns where each charmingly-warped house had eyes. Ham, cheese, mamaliga (polenta) and tsuica marked my days and the warm reception by Romanian friends gave me memories forever. But even then, before the Dracula-Leader went totally bonkers, Romania bore Orwellian overtones. Charades ruled the roost. Bookstores sold stuff that nobody wanted to read. Shoe stores sold footwear that nobody wanted to buy. The news wasn't new. "Friendship with all countries" meant that everyone was suspect. The gypsies lived in junkyards on real desolation rows. Pollution covered the territory of a `people's republic'. How glad I was that I had not been born Romanian. When, over ten years later, the "Romanian Revolution" occurred, I was both glad (Dracula had met his silver bullet) and horrified, when I heard that perhaps 60,000 people had been killed.
Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian exile in the USA, felt a great burst of hope. His country would get out from under at last. He rushed, full of memories and dreams, back to Romania with an National Public Radio team. THE HOLE IN THE FLAG is the poetic, humorous, well-paced memoir of what he found, how he'd left it, with bits on adjusting in America, his old classmates, and his family. At first the reader shares all the stories, the rumors, the excitement, the sounds of battle. Later, in cooler times, Codrescu, like the rest of the world (or those who paid attention), realized that he'd been had. The charades had not stopped. Romania had gone through yet another one. Was it a revolution ? How many had actually died and who had killed them ? Who were the new leaders ? How did the leader die ? What was Russia's role in all this ? When I returned to Romania in 1996, my friends, now deeply disillusioned, raised all these questions and supplied a few depressing answers. With both eyes open and equipped by Romanian life with a large supply of cynicism, Codrescu re-writes the story of the "Revolution" in the latter half of his book. This is top reporting, top writing. Only a poet could write about Ceausescu's Romania and the state of mind it created, because words might fail anyone else. I could easily give the book five stars for writing, but have given it four because, sadly, it is dated now. Perhaps readers will not find the events so relevant, but as a look at human nature, it will never go out of style. I doubt if Bob Dylan had ever seen or thought about Romania, but to quote him is to sum up the feeling you'll get from THE HOLE IN THE FLAG.
"Now at midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do.
They they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene,
Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping from Desolation Row."*
*with one minor change
When I visited Romania for a month in 1979, I saw a beautiful green land of geese and flowering apple trees, ghostly old Transylvanian hill towns where each charmingly-warped house had eyes. Ham, cheese, mamaliga (polenta) and tsuica marked my days and the warm reception by Romanian friends gave me memories forever. But even then, before the Dracula-Leader went totally bonkers, Romania bore Orwellian overtones. Charades ruled the roost. Bookstores sold stuff that nobody wanted to read. Shoe stores sold footwear that nobody wanted to buy. The news wasn't new. "Friendship with all countries" meant that everyone was suspect. The gypsies lived in junkyards on real desolation rows. Pollution covered the territory of a `people's republic'. How glad I was that I had not been born Romanian. When, over ten years later, the "Romanian Revolution" occurred, I was both glad (Dracula had met his silver bullet) and horrified, when I heard that perhaps 60,000 people had been killed.
Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian exile in the USA, felt a great burst of hope. His country would get out from under at last. He rushed, full of memories and dreams, back to Romania with an National Public Radio team. THE HOLE IN THE FLAG is the poetic, humorous, well-paced memoir of what he found, how he'd left it, with bits on adjusting in America, his old classmates, and his family. At first the reader shares all the stories, the rumors, the excitement, the sounds of battle. Later, in cooler times, Codrescu, like the rest of the world (or those who paid attention), realized that he'd been had. The charades had not stopped. Romania had gone through yet another one. Was it a revolution ? How many had actually died and who had killed them ? Who were the new leaders ? How did the leader die ? What was Russia's role in all this ? When I returned to Romania in 1996, my friends, now deeply disillusioned, raised all these questions and supplied a few depressing answers. With both eyes open and equipped by Romanian life with a large supply of cynicism, Codrescu re-writes the story of the "Revolution" in the latter half of his book. This is top reporting, top writing. Only a poet could write about Ceausescu's Romania and the state of mind it created, because words might fail anyone else. I could easily give the book five stars for writing, but have given it four because, sadly, it is dated now. Perhaps readers will not find the events so relevant, but as a look at human nature, it will never go out of style. I doubt if Bob Dylan had ever seen or thought about Romania, but to quote him is to sum up the feeling you'll get from THE HOLE IN THE FLAG.
"Now at midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do.
They they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene,
Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping from Desolation Row."*
*with one minor change
December 13, 2024
Very well written and entertaining. I love the personal stories of a memoir. They always seem like an author would never make it up, like a different category.
This review follows much after the reading and in a rush, so the only thing to note is the author's skepticism for the new government. Here we are now in 2024 and a Romanian election was recently annulled. Not that I have all the details, but annulling elections 25 year later justifies his concerns.
This review follows much after the reading and in a rush, so the only thing to note is the author's skepticism for the new government. Here we are now in 2024 and a Romanian election was recently annulled. Not that I have all the details, but annulling elections 25 year later justifies his concerns.
December 11, 2017
I read this book during and after my first time visiting Romania. It has been a great resource in understanding pre- and post-revolution Romania. Andrei’s perspective is intriguing and adds a face to history. Recommended for anyone planning to visit Romania or Eastern Europe.
September 21, 2017
An unimaginable story if you weren't there. Five stars doesn't describe it.
May 16, 2020
A great review of the revolution and a return to Romania afterward. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
March 23, 2024
This book was an excellent insight into what happened in those days in Romania.
Want to Read
October 5, 2024recommended by author Ruta Sepetys
April 23, 2009
Over the years, I have heard author Andrei Codrescu in his role as a news correspondent for National Public Radio. I was curious about this book about the Romanian "Revolution" of 1989 that wasn't really a revolution at all. Within days of the trial and execution of the Ceausescus, Codrescu returned to his country and was caught up in the fervor. A number of nagging questions kept at him until, upon his return to the United States, he learned the whole story.
It is his second trip back, armed with this knowledge, that tips the scales. Ostensibly the purpose of this second visit is to attend his 25th high school reunion in the Transylvanian town of Sibiu. What he discovers there about his old high school chums -- who were not at all the kind of people he thought they were -- makes this a very poignant story about the difficulty inherent in going back to the land from which you were exiled.
It is his second trip back, armed with this knowledge, that tips the scales. Ostensibly the purpose of this second visit is to attend his 25th high school reunion in the Transylvanian town of Sibiu. What he discovers there about his old high school chums -- who were not at all the kind of people he thought they were -- makes this a very poignant story about the difficulty inherent in going back to the land from which you were exiled.
February 21, 2024
He goes home and finds out he was used. A Romanian exile of twenty-five years flies in with an American television crew in December 1989, euphoric, and comes out of it believing the uprising was substantially a coup by one faction of the apparatus wearing a revolution’s clothes. The Timișoara dead, reported in the tens of thousands, turned out to be a few hundred, with bodies taken from a pauper’s cemetery and laid out for cameras.
That is a manufactured atrocity narrative, discovered by a man whose own return was part of the coverage, and he prints it. Nothing obliged him to.
The cap is the access. He saw Romania through ABC News, in a Romanian twenty-five years out of date, and wrote it inside a year. Whatever the country was doing outside the reach of a television crew is not in the book.
Documented rather than critical.
That is a manufactured atrocity narrative, discovered by a man whose own return was part of the coverage, and he prints it. Nothing obliged him to.
The cap is the access. He saw Romania through ABC News, in a Romanian twenty-five years out of date, and wrote it inside a year. Whatever the country was doing outside the reach of a television crew is not in the book.
Documented rather than critical.
October 28, 2025
Andrei Codrescu captured in vivid detail the Romanian revolution of 1989. Codrescu, a Romanian exile, arrives in Romania a week after Ceausescu’s death to document the feelings and ideas of ordinary people in this crucial moment. Codrescu has a keen eye for the true nature of people and situations, describing the spirit and the undertones that stood the test of time. His poetic writing style brings a lot of wit and charm to the book that is also part memoir.
February 17, 2008
This is a very exciting page-turner about the Romanian revolution of 1989, and it was basically my introduction to Romanian history. It's very well written and gives a unique first-hand perspective to the most brutal of the 1989 revolutions.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 20, 2007
Fascinating and detailed account of the 1989 Romanian revolution. Codrescu points out convincingly that the "popular" revolution was much more likely a well-staged coup.
September 19, 2008
This is an amazing first hand account of a Romanian exile who returns to Romania at the end of the Revolution and the eve of independence. You feel as if you are there seeing things for yourself.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews