Hardback : £17.30
Romanian exile Norman Manea's internationally acclaimed memoir/novel, now available to English-language readers
At the center of The Hooligan's Return is the author himself, always an outcast, on a bleak lifelong journey through Nazism and communism to exile in America. But while Norman Manea's book is in many ways a memoir, it is also a deeply imaginative work, traversing time and place, life and literature, dream and reality, past and present. Autobiographical events merge with historic elements, always connecting the individual with the collective destiny. Manea speaks of the bloodiest time of the twentieth century and of the emergence afterward of a global, competitive, and sometimes cynical modern society. Both a harrowing memoir and an ambitious epic project, The Hooligan's Return achieves a subtle internal harmony as anxiety evolves into a delicate irony and a burlesque fantasy. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, this is the work of a writer with an acute understanding of the vast human potential for both evil and kindness, obedience and integrity.
Romanian exile Norman Manea's internationally acclaimed memoir/novel, now available to English-language readers
At the center of The Hooligan's Return is the author himself, always an outcast, on a bleak lifelong journey through Nazism and communism to exile in America. But while Norman Manea's book is in many ways a memoir, it is also a deeply imaginative work, traversing time and place, life and literature, dream and reality, past and present. Autobiographical events merge with historic elements, always connecting the individual with the collective destiny. Manea speaks of the bloodiest time of the twentieth century and of the emergence afterward of a global, competitive, and sometimes cynical modern society. Both a harrowing memoir and an ambitious epic project, The Hooligan's Return achieves a subtle internal harmony as anxiety evolves into a delicate irony and a burlesque fantasy. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, this is the work of a writer with an acute understanding of the vast human potential for both evil and kindness, obedience and integrity.
Norman Manea is Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer-in-residence at Bard College. Deported from his native Romania to a Ukrainian concentration camp during World War Two, he was again forced to leave Romania in 1986, no longer safe under an intolerant Communist dictatorship. Since arriving in the West he has received many important awards, including, in 2016, Romania’s highest distinction, the the Presidential Order “The Romanian Star” in the highest level, of Great Officer. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City. Angela Jianu is a translator and historian. She teaches at University of Warwick, UK.
“An extraordinary book.”—Larissa MacFarquhar, New Yorker
“This world of ours, in his view, is a place where the ridiculous
reigns supreme over all human life and tortures everyone without
respite, and therefore it cannot be ignored because it’s not about
to ignore any of us. . . . He has in mind all those, including
himself, who were left to pay the fool in one of history’s many
traveling circuses.”—Charles Simic, New York Review of Books
“The ’sad country, full of humour’ that was, and still is, Romania
has had no finer and percipient chronicler of its sorrows and
absurdities. . . . He is one of an immensely humane and intelligent
stature.”—Paul Bailey, Times Literary Supplement
“A distinguished writer whose vision of totalitarianism is closer
to Kafka’s cloudy menace, universal, and yet internalized, than to
Orwell’s brass tacks. . . . The artistry of the implication, the
intensity of what can seem a dream state, draws us imperceptibly
through a half-lighted window for lack of the door.”—Richard Eder,
New York Times
“It is that kaleidoscopic excursion into recent and remote
yesterdays that forms the bulk of The Hooligan’s Return, peopled
with many touching moments and characters. All is recounted with
the caustic dexterity and lyrical power we would expect from the
accomplished novelist who gave us Compulsory Happiness and The
Black Envelope.”—Ariel Dorfman, New York Times Book Review
“Norman Manea’s The Hooligan’s Return, translated by Angela Jianu,
is the first British edition of this superb memoir by one of
Romania’s greatest writers, now living in the US. Manea manages to
be down-to-earth and at the same time magical in summoning up the
surreal realities of life under the fascists, first, and then the
unspeakable Ceausesucs.”—John Banville, New Statesman
Awarded Prix Médicis Etranger 2006
“I am profoundly grateful for this living, flesh-and-blood, yet
unearthly memoir.”—Cynthia Ozick
“A fascinating, beguiling record of the almost incredible events
that can transpire in one life, especially if that life is lived in
twentieth-century Eastern Europe. The Hooligan’s Return operates on
so many levels that finally it eludes all classifications and
reveals itself as art.”—Francine Prose
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