Paul Cernat

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Paul Cernat: Critic, essayist and novelist, Paul Cernat teaches at the University of Bucharest and writes about communist / post-communist Romania and the Romanian avant-garde. His reviews and essays have appeared in Romanian cultural magazines since 1998. He holds an MA and a PhD from the University of Bucharest.

b. 1972, Bucharest

2001: În căutarea comunismului pierdut / In search of Communism Lost. Studies, Piteşti: Paralela 45

2004: O lume dispărută / A Vanished World (with Ion Manolescu, Angelo Mitchievici and Ioan Stanomir). Essays, Iaşi: Polirom

2004: Explorări în comunismul românesc I / Explorations in Romanian Communism I. Cultural studies. Iaşi: Polirom

2005: Explorări în comunismul româmesc II / Explorations in Romanian Communism II. Cultural studies. Iaşi: Polirom

2005: Războiul fluturilor / War of the Butterflies (with Andrei Ungureanu). Fiction. Iaşi: Polirom

2007: Contimporanul. Istoria unei reviste de avengardă / The Contemporary: History of an Avant-garde Magazine. Literary history. Bucureşti: Institutul Cultural Român / Bucharest: Romanian Cultural Institute.

2007: Avangarda românească şi complexul periferiei / The Romanian Avant-garde and the Periphery Complex. Cultural studies, Bucureşti: Cartea Românească / Bucharest: Cartea Românească

English: The Imaginary Kingdom of Ştefan Bănulescu

Español: El reino imaginario de Ştefan Bănulescu

Polski: Królestwo wyobraźni Ştefana Bănulescu

Deutsch: Das imaginäre Königreich des Stefan Banulescu

Français: Le Royaume imaginaire de Ştefan Bǎnulescu

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