Captives [Paperback]

Mr. Manea's voice is radically new, and we are blessedly awakened and alerted by the demand his fiction makes on our understanding.A superb writer who gives an extraordinary testimony of a rich and dramatic life under one of the most grotesque and ferocious dictatorships.This world of ours, in his view, is a place where the ridiculous reigns supreme over all human life and tortures everyone without respite, and therefore it cannot be ignored because it's not about to ignore any of us. If that is so, fools are also martyrs. Words caused them to suffer and words are their salvation. Manea's strength as a writer comes from his deep solidarity with such people. He has in mind all those, including himself, who were left to play the fool in one of history's many traveling circuses.With his talent and creativity, Manea belongs to the great men of Romania.A stunning novel set in postwar Romania about language, identity, and loss.