[Tsepeneag] induces the sense that memory, time, and consciousness are both mutable and, ultimately, unknowable. --Elizabeth Hand Tsepeneag creates a fantastical world from the remnants of a society as it flows into modern Europe. Readers interested in the human story beyond the factual history of the dissolution of communism and those interested in the creative process will enjoy this novel. With his metaphors and traps, Dumitru Tsepeneag reminds me of a magician who pulls flowers, animals, and strange objects out of his hat. He lays comical stories over a poignant, and often grim, background.
Dumitru Tsepeneag is one of the most innovative Romanian writers of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1975, while he was in France, his citizenship was revoked by Ceau?escu, and he was forced into exile. In the 1980s, he started to write in French. He returned to his native language after the Ceau?escu regime ended, but continues to write in his adopted language as well. Andrea Reiter is a Research Fellow at the School of Modern Languages, Univeristy of Southampton, UK.