The Black Envelope (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) - Softcover

Manea, Norman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300182945 ISBN 13: 9780300182941

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2012

Synopsis

A splendid, violent spring suddenly grips Bucharest in the 1980s after a brutal winter. Tolea, an eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his job as a high school teacher on "moral grounds," is investigating his father's death forty years after the fact, and is drawn into a web of suspicion and black humor.

"Reading 'The Black Envelope,' one might think of the poisonous 'black milk' of Celan's 'Death Fugue' or the claustrophobic air of mounting terror in Mr. Appelfeld's 'Badenheim 1939.' . . . Mr. Manea offers striking images and insights into the recent experience of Eastern Europe."—New York Times Book Review

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A splendid, violent spring suddenly grips Bucharest in the 1980s after a brutal winter. Tolea, a defiant and eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his job as a high-school teacher on "moral grounds", is attempting to clear up the mystery of his father's death forty years after the fact. He is gradually and irresistibly drawn into a web of suspicion in which images of an underground world linger obsessively: the organization of deaf-mutes whose nightmarish presence recalls the Single Party itself; the polite and timid informer, with his modest, homely reports; the black dog who has the same name as, and seems to be a metamorphosis of, the man pursued by Tolea - an elusive photographer who has left an astonishing photo archive of Communist society. Shot through with black humor and poetry, The Black Envelope is a thoroughly modern exploration of love and guilt, vulnerability and death, estrangement, hope, and human solidarity.

About the Author:

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. Patrick Camiller has translated many works, including Dumitru Tsepeneag’s Vain Art of the Fugue, The Necessary Marriage, and Hotel Europa.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0300182945
• ISBN 13: 9780300182941
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336