Lair

Norman Manea is Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer-in-residence at Bard College. Deported from his native Romania to a Ukrainian concentration camp during World War Two, he was again forced to leave Romania in 1986, no longer safe under an intolerant Communist dictatorship. Since arriving in the West he has received many important awards, including, in 2016, Romania’s highest distinction, the Presidential Order “The Romanian Star” in the highest level, of Great Officer. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City. Oana Sânziana Marian is a poet, translator, photographer, and filmmaker.

“An intelligent, erudite, inexhaustible story-teller, in his essays as much as in his fiction, Norman Manea is above all a witness, someone who has lived to tell the tale. In [The Lair], as in all his work, we find the defining experiences of the twentieth century—the death camps, deportation, totalitarianism (both Fascism and Communism), marginalisation, deracination, exile, self-regeneration—filtered through the sensibility of one of its most astute survivors.”—Costa Bradatan, Times Literary SupplementA New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice”“[An] acclaimed novel of love, isolation and the disorientation of being submerged in another culture.”—GrantaLonglisted by Three Percent for their 2013 Best Translated Book in Fiction