Compulsory Happiness

"Norman Manea's four novellas, written during the later Ceausescu years, offer a comparable contrast to other Eastern European dissident writing. Instead of the energetic irony, the ebullient absurdism, the sharp-eyed wit, we find a dreamy disconnection, a voice that shock has lowered, an air of sweetness driven mad."
--Richard Eder, "Los Angeles Times"

About the author

NORMAN MANEA is a Jewish Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He is a Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer in residence at Bard College. He currently lives in the United States.

Summary

In cool, precise prose, and with an unerring sense of the absurd, Norman Manea's four novellas create a picture of everyday life in a grotesque police state, expressing terror and hope, fear and solidarity, the humorous triviality of the ordinary, and the painful search for an ideal.

Product details

• Authors: Manea, Norman Manea
• Assisted by: Linda Coverdale (Translation)
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.10.1994
• EAN: 9780810111905
• ISBN: 978-0-8101-1190-5
• No. of pages: 259
• Dimensions: 122 mm x 203 mm x 19 mm
• Weight: 313 g
• Series: Writings from an Unbound Europ; Writings from an Unbound Europe; Writings from an Unbound Europ; Writings from an Unbound Europe
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature