Archive

Synopsis of The Velvet Man

March 01, 2009

Translated by: Jean Harris

Tache de catifea / The Velvet Man is an anti-picaresque tale in which a trio of three Romanian “anti-musketeers”—Tache, a clever Dwarf, and the Dwarf’s brother, a country squire, set out to join an historical uprising against the Ottoman empire only to find that the uprising is over when ...

Synopsis | Ştefan Agopian

Synopsis of Tobit

March 01, 2009

Translated by: Jean Harris

Inverting the religious tenor of the non-canonical Book of Tobit (in which Tobit père sends Tobit fils to marry Sara), Ştefan Agopian creates a novel about the story of a son, Tobit, sent by his father (aka Tobit) in quest of a wife, Sara. In Agopian’s tale, the dutiful search transforms into ...

Synopsis | Gabriela Adameşteanu

About Gabriela Adameşteanu’s Wasted Morning

February 01, 2009

Translated by: Jean Harris

…The novel has two planes. It begins and ends on the plane of the present in which Madam [Vica] Delcă goes on her visiting tour, beginning in the morning at her sister-in-law’s…and carrying on through a visit to Ivona Scarlat, wife of a lawyer, himself the descendant of au upper bourgeois ...

Synopsis | Radu Cosaşu

The Survivals: A Synopsis

January 08, 2009

Critic: Carmen Muşat

Translated by: Jean Harris

Radu Cosaşu’s The Survivals takes place in Romania immediately after the Second World War. The newly installed communist regime had come to power by means of massive electoral fraud. Telling stories of everyday life, Cosaşu paints a world turned upside down. Although it is more than that, the ...

Synopsis | Stelian Tănase

Synopsis of Corpuri de iluminat / Dark Bodies, a novel by Stelian Tănase

September 30, 2008

Critic: Jean Harris

Corpuri de iluminat[1] means “lighting fixtures.” You see those words on lamp stores in Bucharest where the novel takes place. Only, the Romanian for lighting fixtures translates word for word as bodies to be lit--implicitly “bodies in need of light.” Translated in English as Dark ...

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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