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Norman Manea. Intoarcerea huliganului. lasi Polirom. 2003. 360 pages. 185,000 lei. ISBN 973681-311-8
_____. The Hooligan's Return. Angela Jianu, tr. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2003. 385 pages. $30. ISBN 0-374-28256-0
"I DO NOT FEEL AT ALL TEMPTED to take a walk in today's Bucharest, on Antonescu's Boulevard, that military dictator of Romania and Hitler's ally, and who, in 1941 sent the child I was then to the extermination camps of Transnistria," writes Romanian author Norman Manea (see WLT 72:1, p. 75). Nevertheless, in 1997, nine years after settling in New York in self-imposed exile, Manea returned for a brief visit to his native country. He traveled with two companions-an American friend and a blue notebook. A reputed musician and the president of the college where Manea is now writer-in-residence, the American friend was answering an invitation to conduct the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra in a brief series of concerts. The blue notebook would record their voyage. Eventually, the account became an essay-memoir, The Hooligan's Return.
The association of the two travel companions could almost seem a creation of the novelist, for the contrast between the two men engages confrontations of personalities and cultures, provides material for commentaries, asks provocative questions, and underlines the dissimilarities of their life experiences. Alert and self-assured, with an intelligent curiosity and lively humor, the American guest conductor radiates an innocence of evil that, at times, leaves his writer friend helpless. Nevertheless, his reassuring presence will provide a sort of Ariadne's thread through the maze of the writer's encounter with the past and will often reconnect him with what is now his American present. In contrast, hesitant, cautious, and depressed yet tempted by this voyage upstream, a voyage to...