Iulian Ciocan
Before Brezhnev Died / Înainte să moară Brejnev / Než zemřel Brežněv
Dybbuk: 2009
Translated by Jiří Našinec.
Foreword by Andrei Bodiu
Originally published in Polirom’s “Ego Proza” collection Iulian Ciocan’s novel deserves a close look, on it’s own merits and because it speaks to the ongoing turmoil in the still communist Republic of Moldova, Romania’s neighbor and home to nearly 75,000 readers and writers of Romanian.
Novelist, critic and journalist, Iulian Ciocan is one of the most active writers in the Republic of Moldova. Although this novel looks back to the Soviet era, those unfamiliar with the country will learn much about the present (with its on-going communist legacy) as Ciocan recovers the so-called normal life of homo sovieticus through the travails of his characters, who negotiate a territory both mined with propaganda and dire poverty and notable for a total lack of perspective
Andrei Bodiu writes: The irony and bitter humor with which [Ciocan] depicts the end of an era remind me of Nabokov’s enormous simplicity and Harms’ brilliant humor.
Iulian Ciocan (b. April 6, 1968, in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova) graduated from the Faculty of Philology, at the “Transilvania” University in Brasov, in 1995. His works include literary criticismMetamorfoze narative / Narrative Metamorphoses (Chişinău: Arc, 1996) and Incursiuni în proza basarabeană / Bessarabian Fiction: An Overview (Chişinău: Arc, 2004, short fiction, critical articles and reviews in such magazines as Contrafort,Sud-Est, Basarabia (Republic of Moldova), Familia,Observator cultural, Secolul 21 (Romania) andLabyrint (Czech Republic). He is a radio host at the Free Europe station, a member of both Romanian and Moldavian Writers’ Unions, and a member of Moldavian PEN.
