Auf der Mântuleasa-Strasse is a genuine "fantastic story" in the best hair-raising tradition; but the incredible, the bizarre, is firmly supported here by the ingenious frame of acute actuality: the reality of terror—that ingredient of our times—the reality of the human being under lock and key in a police state….

Is Auf der Mântuleasa-Strasse a satire of the police state? A roman à clef? In the brutality of the inquisitors, contrasting to the hallucinatory beauty of that old human obsession, is there a fable of man annihilated by his fellow man? Or is the hero only a seedy old teacher caught in the clutches of a savage machinery? The story does not want to answer directly but remains mysterious in its multifaceted brilliance, locked in its singular charm.

Marguerite Dorian, "Romanian: 'Auf der Mântuleasa-Strasse'," in Books Abroad (copyright 1975 by the University of Oklahoma Press...