The Back Cover

Gabriela Adameşteanu

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Dimineaţă pierdută / Wasted Morning is a fully matured novel that places the author not only among the greatest contemporary novelists but also among the best in our literature.

–Monica Lovinescu, Radio Free Europe

Gabriela Adameşteanu distinguishes herself as much through the quality of her writing as through the melancholy of her gaze which sweeps—with a certain brutality—through nearly a century of Romanian history. Reading Dimineaţă pierdută / Wasted Morning one finds oneself thinking how rare it is to meet a writer who so brilliantly demonstrates such compassion for her characters…

—Le Monde

Dimineaţă pierdută / Wasted Morning is a painful symbol of Romania, sacrificed for a century and a half on the alter of two wars plus communism....in Céline’s oral style, reinventing popular speech and the lyricism of the streets...

—Lire

Dãruieşte-ţi o zi devacanţã / Give Yourself a Day Off: Concise, sober, veracious, even brutal, Gabriela Adameşteanu’s stories transmit a thrill of loneliness and failure every time.

—Cornel Moraru

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