The Encounter [Paperback]

Pushed around by ticket takers who demand his ticket in several languages, a middle aged man goes through a nightmare of hiding and getting away until he manages to cross a frontier guarded by soldiers and dogs. He???s made it back to his native village. There he finds his whole family gathered around a big table, as if for a wedding, a baptism or a wake, but no one recognizes him, not even his mother. Romanian Gabriela Adamesteanu???s daring, allusive novel reads as a series of dreams merged with vivid memories. At its centre is Prof Traian Manu, an academic who left his native country many years earlier, before the door of communism slammed shut. . . . Alistair Ian Blyth???s symphonic translation conveys the various tone shifts of the several narrative viewpoints engaged with piecing together the story as the novel balances the melancholic with the farcical. . . . Adamesteanu???s kindly wanderer, an academic, not a warrior, is no less heroic for being one and is also sympathetic. The mirrors may be shrouded, yet the various reflections of lives and experiences are there to be seen, catching the light as so many truths slowly emerge from fragments of memory and half-remembered, never-forgotten facts.