This study makes Romanias largely unknown Joycean heritage visible to an international readership. Reviewing Joyces critical reception and translations, as well as the writers influence on Romanian prose, it brings Derridas notion of hostipitality to comparative literary and translation studies in order to theorize the impact of politics and ideology on fiction. After an original survey of the links between Romanian modernism/postmodernism and Western literature, it focuses on alternate trends of hostility and hospitality towards Joyce, especially his techniques and style. It examines how translations dealt with themes prone to communist censorship (politics, sexuality, religion, food), before discussing Joyces impact on Romanian writers such as Eliade, Biberi, Bli and Ooiu.
