The novel “Abraxas” was published by Polirom in 2022. Having grown up surrounded by the apocalyptic tensions of a broken family, torn between an artistic mother, a painter with a toxic personality, and an adventurous but strict father, Michi Lucescu isolates himself from the world, in the attic of an old house. Chiţ-Chiţ ― his pet name ― spent his childhood and adolescence in the Bucharest of the last communist decades. He moved between his paternal grandparent’s apartment in a Ceaușescu-era tower block, looking down on the Valley of Weeping in the famous Tineretului district; or with his mother in a fabulous building next to the Jewish cemetery, which sported two stone lions guarding the entrance and stained-glass windows. The architecture of the real spaces subtly resonates with the inner architecture of memory. The character, through a sort of dreaming recollection, goes deep into “the heart of darkness” and reveals scenes from his own life as well as characters and stories from different times and places. As he wanders through the apartment building of his memories, Michi opens the doors to 11 flats, one after another, simultaneously becoming the viewer and the protagonist of spectacles of failure and self-destruction. His roaming brings him to the Vienna of the psycho-sociologist Jacob Levi Moreno, to the Paris of Ilarie Voronca and the New York of the writer Delmore Schwartz ― all people hailing from Romania. The novel thus becomes an impressive shadow show, suggestive of Albrecht Dürer’s engravings, in incisive prose peppered with visual and sensory arabesques. A confluence of light and darkness, similar to the personality of the god Abraxas, the novel ingeniously documents the evil and the melancholy of the world, and unashamedly believes in the power of literature to redeem.

Short bios:

Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu (born in 1979) is a contemporary Romanian novelist, poet, essayist and translator, as well as a reputed Romanian publisher. He holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Bucharest. Selected works: Soarele negru (Trei, 2024 – Book of the Year 2024 awarded by Bookzone), Abraxas (Polirom, 2022), Adorabilii etrusci (poems, Charmides, 2021), Copilăria lui Kaspar Hauser (Polirom, 2017 – shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature in 2018), După bătălie ne-am tras sufletul (Cartea Românească, 2012), Ceea ce ne desparte. Epistolarul de la Hanul lui Manuc (Polirom, 2010 – debut book of essays).   

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Lora Nenkovska is a literary translator with more than 16 years of experience and more than 27 published translations. She is also a chief assistant professor at Sofia University teaching Contemporary Romanian Language, Medieval and Contemporary Romanian Literature and Translation. She is a passionate reader and researcher in the field of contemporary female and feminist literature. She is the author of the Poetic Reports from Romania Column in Literaturen Vestnik (Literary Newspaper).

This seminar is organized within the TANDEM – Author with Translator – Translator with Author Fellowship program supported by S. Fischer Stiftung, Germany.