A virtuoso collage novel about narrative, identity, and exile, from international literary sensation Norman Manea
In this vibrant mosaic of voices, sources, and stories, the protagonist, known only as the Nomadic Misanthrope, leaves communist Romania and is reunited with his friend Gunther, an unrepentant Marxist exiled in Berlin. Their meeting sparks a spirited dialogue that endures throughout the Nomadic Misanthrope’s subsequent decades in the United States. At the center of the plot is the figure of the shadow—the insubstantial shape of the exile, the wandering Jew, the death camp survivor, the individual under totalitarianism, the dark side of the Jungian personality—a figure that calls into question the boundaries of the human condition.
Recalling the beloved nineteenth-century German tale of Peter Schlemihl, the man who sold his shadow for a bag of gold, this is Norman Manea’s most daring work yet: an intimate record of alienation and endurance.
A virtuoso collage novel about narrative, identity, and exile, from international literary sensation Norman Manea
In this vibrant mosaic of voices, sources, and stories, the protagonist, known only as the Nomadic Misanthrope, leaves communist Romania and is reunited with his friend Gunther, an unrepentant Marxist exiled in Berlin. Their meeting sparks a spirited dialogue that endures throughout the Nomadic Misanthrope’s subsequent decades in the United States. At the center of the plot is the figure of the shadow—the insubstantial shape of the exile, the wandering Jew, the death camp survivor, the individual under totalitarianism, the dark side of the Jungian personality—a figure that calls into question the boundaries of the human condition.
Recalling the beloved nineteenth-century German tale of Peter Schlemihl, the man who sold his shadow for a bag of gold, this is Norman Manea’s most daring work yet: an intimate record of alienation and endurance.
Norman Manea is an internationally celebrated author whose books have been translated into over thirty languages. He is Francis Flournoy Professor Emeritus of European Studies and Culture as well as writer-in-residence at Bard College. He lives in New York City. Carla Baricz is a translator of Romanian literature. She lives in New Haven, CT.
“One of the most eloquent living witnesses of the European 20th
century, Norman Manea, at 87, has brought out Exiled Shadow, a
contemplative work of fiction . . . [in] a strong, clarion
translation into English by Carla Baricz. . . . A fitting
summarization of a rich and deeply honorable career.”—Sam Sacks,
Wall Street Journal
“Manea has always had a penchant for experimental writing, but he
has rarely experimented more boldly, and with more evident delight,
than here.”—Costica Bradatan, Times Literary Supplement
“Exiled Shadow belongs among the great, intricate, and
uncompromising works of contemporary literature.”—Jan Knoffeke,
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)
“An evocative book on the self and its shadow in an era of
destruction.”—Oliver Jens Schmitt, Falter (Austria)
“The text brilliantly weaves [the stories’] threads together to
ponder the difference between ‘the shadow (how one is perceived
socially)’ and ‘the soul (one’s individual existence).’”— Michele
Levy, World Literature Today
Shortlisted for the 2024 EBRD Literature Prizes sponsored by the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
“Norman Manea’s inventive and powerful novel casts its bright light
on the dark corners of history and experience, and wittily
alchemizes tyranny, displacement and our essential human complexity
into literature, into art.”—Francine Prose
“A brilliant book, full of wisdom, humor, and intelligence, by a
clear, profound voice that seems to convey centuries of experience.
A masterpiece.”—Alberto Manguel
“Norman Manea, eminent thinker and writer of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, stands as a major interpreter of the
ironies of exile: the loss of birthplace, the loss of language, the
loss of the past as it weaves through the nomadry of the future. In
conceptually incisive imagery that burns through spirit and flesh,
Exiled Shadow is in part a memoir, and a meditation, and a
narrative of the history of cities and their ruins and their
glories and crimes. It is also a demonstration of the nature of the
artist: the man on the flying trapeze as well as the poet, the
dreamer as well as the wandering Jew. There is no other novel like
it, and there never will be.”—Cynthia Ozick
“This book’s a diary of history, literature, and Norman Manea. His
book knows more about my life than I do. Beautifully feigning, his
prose suffers from a constant toothache of poetry. Some books save
lives and souls.”—Stanley Moss
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