~ novel, 2001, read The City of the Last Eclipse in Romanian
The novel is a satire on the Romanian society after ’89, which has fallen into eclipse. The author anchors himself in the cruel reality of the time. His destructive laughter leads to an instantaneous explosion of the demagogy of vain words, false culture, false humor, enveloping the tragic, the sublime, the grotesque in the fine web of irony. Beneath this seemingly innocent humor hides the immeasurable social drama.
second edition received the Vasile Militaru Award from U.S.R. (Writers’ Union of Romania) at the second National Festival for Literature and Satire in Pitesti (2008)
second edition nominated for the Book of the Year (for prose)Award by U.S.R.–Pitesti (2007)
second edition presented at the Gaudeamus International Book Fair Bucharest (2006)
Upon reading The City of the Last Eclipse, I have rediscovered the bitter taste of post-communism Romanian reality, captured in the novel with equal grace and cultivated narrative style. The circumstances, characters, institutions, and social groups blend in an amalgam that is both familiar and surprising, banal and extraordinary. It is the way we are but do not admit being. The reading experience is emotional and laden with satisfactions and revelations. The novel provokes a necessary self-analysis of our conscience, dormant in relation to a reality that tends to become a nightmare.
Constanta County Library, library adviser Adriana Gheorghiu
Thank you for your novelThe City of the Last Eclipse, an excellent radiography of such a non-transitory transition. Let me congratulate you on having а great sense of humor ‒ an extremely rare quality nowadays.
CLARA NICOLLET, France, moderator of the Nadir_latent discussion list dedicated to contemporary Romanian literature
I have read The City of the Last Eclipse. I simply adored your book and have to express my entire admiration for this novel that Romanians needed.
