The Back Cover

Ştefan Agopian

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Manualul întîmplărilor /A Guide to Random Events is the novelist’s book of reference and one of the most important novels of our times

—Ioan Holban

It’s a good idea to reread Manualul întîmplărilor /A Guide to Random Events from time to time for the pure joy of [seeing how] in this bewitching book …a world constitutes itself within a few pages [in such a way that] in the passage of mere instants an apocryphal early 19^th Century passes into eternity itself.

—Petru Creţia

Sara confirms the fact that Ştefan Agopian is the most original prose writer of his generation.

—Ioan Holban

Tache de catifea /The Velvet Man is a historical novel, full of poetry and sarcasm….Agopian chronicles old times, refined cruelties, with a British calm…an almost absent-minded irony.

—Paul Georgescu

Orjen, the little red-haired witch, Rabbi Aaron Juda Hartman, Fric himself, the priapic and suicidal monk, the voyeur Giacomo Minotto, the masturbating-dreamlike character Maria Dragases, Evemon Notarades, who might have stepped out of Marquez—all the caligraphic portraits in Fric abide by the law of the underworld...the law of the Rabelaisian carnival, which is Agopian’s law.

—Dan C. Mihăilescu

About this issue

This July, The Observer Translation Project leaves its usual format to present a special CRISIS ISSUE. Things are tough all over. Hard Times suddenly feels like the book of the moment. The global economic crisis impacts life as we know it, and viewed from Bucharest the effects reverberate in domains that include geo-politics and publishing in Romania and abroad, with the crisis at The Observer Translation Project as an instance of a universal phenomenon. read more...

Translator's Choice

Author: Stelian Tănase
Translated by: Jean Harris

From Maestro: A Melodrama. Episode 7

Emiluţa has an unfortunate thought. She’ll throw herself off the top of the building. Why? What the fuck? Let’s say for the cause of PeaceonEarth, for the slumdogs, Europe, for the lonely. Which is to say she doesn’t have a ghost of a reason. Viva Walachia! The way things stand, if ...

Translator’s Note
Translator’s Note: a synopsis

Author: Ştefan Agopian
Translated by: Ileana Orlich

How I Learned to Read (from Tache de Catifea / The Velvet Man)

The bearded man was the owner of an apothecary shop where he worked with two apprentices. Nobody paid me any mind, so I spent all day in what was supposed to be the shop. I say this because it was a large, dark room full of odors—a mix of smells from everywhere. The room hadn’t been cleaned ...

Translator’s Note
Re: Learning to Read, from Tache de catifea / The Velvet Man

Author: Gabriela Adameşteanu
Translated by: Patrick Camiller

Wasted Morning - Napoleon in Bucharest

“What you’ve got here is heaven on earth,” Vica says as she drops onto the kitchen chair. “But where’s your mother?” “At work,” Gelu lazily replies, leaning sideways against the door. “She’s doing mornings this week, didn’t you know?” He is tall and thin, with unset ...

Author: Petre Ispirescu
Translated by: Jean Harris

Youth Without Age and Life Without Death

It happened once as never before-y, ‘cause if it couldn’t be true, it wouldn’t make a story about the time when the poplar tree made berries and the willow tree broke out in cherries, when bears began to brawl with their tails, and wolf and lamb, unfurling their sails, threw arms around each ...

Translator’s Note
On Petre Ispirescu