Norman Manea represents both the modernist vocation of Romanian prose writing and the well-established tradition and inclination of this literature toward the expressionist style. He stands for a specific Romanian mode of opposition to totalitarianism: an aesthetic one, mild, yet tenacious. He is also a good example of the way in which the Romanian literary language was able to benefit from the influx of various ethnic influences, in this case the Jewish one.

Norman Manea was born on 19 July 1936 in the city of Suceava in northern Romania. His father, Marcu Manea, was an accountant, and his mother, Janeta (née Braunstein), was a bookseller. Soon the family fell victim to the atrocities of World War II: in 1941 Manea, his parents, and grandparents were transported to a concentration camp in Ukraine. He spent four years there and saw part of his family perish, an experience that indelibly marked...