Dan Zamfirescu, literary critic and historian
Valcea currently has one of the most important writers in Romania. M.M. Loviste is a real writer, much like the “old” and “old-fashioned,” “expired,” Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balzac wrote. His books are devastating, true ballads of suffering, keeping you on the edge of your seat. The oeuvre of M.M. Loviste will endure in the history of Romanian literature.
For more details, watch the presentation at the International Book Fair Gaudeamus, Bucharest in 2006 (external blog post).
Emil Boroghina, director, theater manager
I had the immense pleasure of reading your books. You can make a good film from the subjects you approach anytime. Congratulations!
Mircea Ghitulescu, drama critic
M.M. Loviste is a tenacious author full of vitality, with serious abilities for prose.
Ileana Malancioiu, poet
M.M. Loviste writes intelligently and with a keen sense of humor.
Eugen Negrici, literary critic
M.M. Loviste possesses real and evident writing skills: the ability to create atmosphere, the journalistic sense of the concreteness, and narrative fluency. The author has a bright future ahead of him.
Prof. Dr. Florea Firan, literary critic
M.M. Loviste moves his magnifying lens over odds and ends, revealing the texture of the finest details that make up his books quite clearly: the epic approach to rural life in post-war Romania in his debut novel A Cross Too Heavy; the torture and humiliation endured for almost a decade by Romanian prisoners in Stalin’s Russia in the novel Stolen Identities; the drama of the Romanian intellectual presented in Nessus’s Attire, and, in the novella The Irretrievable, the fantastic world of the wronged peasants from Tara Lovistei, where the author melts with the pain of the peasants he stems from. The narrator’s gaze freezes the subject, making it stand still in previously chosen poses. Through a process of metaphoric sublimation, movement reabsorbs itself, becoming spatializes, flowing stops, lucidity restores everything in primordial patterns of an infinite simplicity and grandeur of existence. The City of the Last Eclipse is the expression of supreme tension, a desperate cry in the face of the contrasts of a society fallen into eclipse. In fact, under the power of vice hides a social drama close to the limits of human endurance, which the characters experience under the empty sky of a torrid sun, where the author anchors himself to the cruel reality of the time. He dismisses the “gods” of the city and perverts the spirits, drinking himself enough hemlock. His destructive laughter leads to an instantaneous explosion of the demagogy of vain words, false culture, false humor. M.M. Loviste presents himself as a narrator of human differences, unrepeatable situations, and attention to the unique – interesting characteristics at a time when human values no longer receive full credit. The author reflects on what he writes, surrounding the tragic, the sublime, and the grotesque in the fine web of irony. Beneath this seemingly innocent humor lies the immeasurable social drama.
Constantin Mateescu, novelist, literary critic
The prose of M.M. Loviste stems from the good tradition of our literature. Without obstinately looking for innovations or other sophisticated narrative techniques, the author proves he knows how to relate, skillfully lead the storyline and create suspense. His style is sober, well-tempered, and his language simple, natural, and unostentatious. M.M. Loviste’s literature carries the scent of the stories whispered at nighttime, in the dim light of an oil lamp.