Translated from Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth and recently published by Spuyten Duyvil in New York, in the framework of RCI's Translation and Publication Support Programme, Stelian Tanase's book will have its American launch at the Harriman Institute, a prestigious forum for intellectual exchange founded in 1946. "Auntie Varvara's Clients" will be introduced by Bradley Abrams, Associate Director of the Harriman Institute and discussed by the author with Corina Suteu and the audience. You can find a chapter of the book in Archipelago.
"Stelian Tanase's Auntie Varvara's Clients docudramatizes historical phenomena which are rather lateral on the the American reader's radar. Be warned - rather lateral American reader - that you are in for a bountiful story of the Romanian communist stooges of America's ex-archenemy, the Soviet Union. The time for cute is gone - there aren't any dolls on this savage puppet stage: the story of the communist take-over of Romania, pregnant with dark fascination, never delivered much beyond mercy and hopelessness. Stelian Ta˜nase's volume scans the period leading to that take-over that left the country at unfragrant feet of the Red Army; it focuses on events dating back to the 1920s-40s, but also follows their characters' fates into the 1944-1989 period - when Romania was sucked into the world's largest red district - and up until the early twenty-first century." - Calin-Andrei Mihailescu (from the introduction - "Under the Curfew of History").
Spuyten Duyvil books are now distributed by Greenfield.
HARRIMAN INSTITUTE > 420 W 118th St - 12th Floor MC 3345 > www.harrimaninstitute.org FREE ADMISSION. RSVP icrny@icrny.org, 212-687-0180.
