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Title: The Hooligan's Return: A Memoir by Norman Manea, Angela Jianu ISBN: 0-374-28256-0 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A great autobiography
Comment: This is a wonderful, if difficult book. It cronicles the author's life. Norman Manea suffered from both the Holocaust and Communism. Being Jewish, he and his family were deported during the Second World War to a concentration camp set up by Romania's fascist regime (General Ion Antonescu, Hitler's ally) in Transnistria, where several hundred thousand Jews were imprisoned and died in horrible circumstances. Luckily he survived the KZ and returned to Romania. Later on, when he had become a writer, he was declared enemy of the state and a 'hooligan' by Romania's Communists, because he had dared criticize the antisemitic government in an article. (Another fascinating Romanian-Jewish writer, Mihail Sebastian (see his Jurnal) was described as a 'hooligan' by antisemits in a literary scandal back in the 30's - the term has deep connotations for Manea). His relationship to his homeland remained troubled even after he left Romania in the 80's, settling down in New York as a professor for literature (he teaches at Bard College). Although he is one of Romania's best writers, his country's literary elite treats him with a certain embarassment. He can be compared in this respect to Imre Kertesz's relationship with Hungary.
I liked this book not only because of all the detailed, multi-faceted and subtle description of these events, but also because it is an honest and selfironical autobiography. Manea is a reluctant autobiographer. My feeling is that he wrote this book out of duty; not to brag about his past, rather to pay tribute to those he loved and to remind the world of the terrible journey he has been through - a very typical journey for Jews and many East Europeans in the 20th century...
P.S. If this book is superfluous, then so are the books by e.g. Anne Frank, Primo Levy and Mihail Sebastian. Good luck in burning them!
Rating: 1
Summary: What a waste
Comment: There was a joke told in the 1950's in Rumania. It goes like this:
"2 Romanians walk in the year 2000 (in the future) in the Cismigiu Park when they see an old man seating on a bench half asleep. The first man says; " This old man looks jewish..."
-No responds his friend I don't think he's a stupid cow!"
Why does anybody care to know what this guy has to say about the free world after 50 years of voluntary confinement in a retarded communist regime?
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Title: On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist : Essays by Norman Manea ISBN: 0802133754 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: October, Eight O'Clock by Norman Manea, Cornelia Golna, Anselm Hollo ISBN: 0802133711 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Black Envelope by Norman Manea, Patrick Camillier ISBN: 0810113775 Publisher: Hydra Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Journal 1935-1944: The Fascist Years by Mihail Sebastian, Radu Ioanid, Patrick Camiller ISBN: 1566633265 Publisher: Ivan R Dee, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $36.00 |
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Title: The Holocaust in Romania : The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 by Radu Ioanid, Foreword by Elie Wiesel ISBN: 1566632560 Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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