Captives
Description
Captives, the acclaimed writer Norman Manea's first novel, is a fascinating, kaleidoscopic, and imaginative look into postwar Romania. Divided into three sections-narrated in first-, second-, and third-person voices-Captives explores the lives of several defeated characters as they become almost too much to bear under the weight of endless humiliations: loss of identity, trauma of having survived the Second World War, and submission to the totalitarian state.
This is a moving account of a country shaken by communism and anti-Semitism and haunted by recent atrocities, from a distinguished writer whose vision of totalitarianism is close to Kafka's cloudy menace, universal yet internalized (Richard Eder, The New York Times).
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About the Author
Reviews
A superb writer who gives an extraordinary testimony of a rich and dramatic life under one of the most grotesque and ferocious dictatorships.--Mario Vargas Llosa
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.--Charles Simic
With his talent and creativity, Manea belongs to the great men of Romania.--Orhan Pamuk