Mihail Sebastian

A prescient interwar masterpiece, available in English for the first time 'Absolutely, definitively alone', a young Jewish student in Romania tries to make sense of a world that has decided he doesn't belong. Spending his days walking the streets and his nights drinking and gambling, meeting revolutionaries, zealots, lovers and libertines, he adjusts his eyes to the darkness that falls over Europe, and threatens to destroy him. Mihail Sebastian's 1934 novel was written amid the anti-Semitism which would, by the end of the decade, force him out of his career and turn his friends and colleagues against him. For Two Thousand Years is a lucid, heart-wrenching chronicle of resilience and despair, broken layers of memory and the terrible forces of history.

For Two Thousand Years

Journal 1935-44

Orașul cu salcâmi

A Novel

Women

roman

Femei

Accidentul

Patrick Camiller

Radu Ioanid

The Fascist Years

Journal 1935-1944

Available for the first time in English, this novel of love and betrayal has enthralled readers all over Europe.

The Accident

Alain Paruit

Quelques secondes ? Ou déjà quelques longues minutes ? Elle ne sentait rien. Elle entendait autour d'elle des voix, des pas, des appels, mais le tout sourd et gris, une sorte de pâte sonore d'où se détachait parfois, avec une subite clarté, une cloche de tramway ou un cri... " C'est donc un accident ", se dit-elle, très calme, presque indifférente. Bucarest, 1938. À la suite d'un banal accident de la circulation, Nora va être reconnue par Paul dont elle s'éprend aussitôt. Mais Paul aime follement Anna, peintre célèbre qui vient de le quitter. Les intermittences du cœur, tel va être le thème de ce roman. Banal Certainement pas, car il a pour toue de fond l'Europe centrale à la veille de la guerre et donc la fin d'un monde. Entre un Bucarest crépusculaire et les montagnes magiques de Transylvanie, un homme et deux femmes vont aller jusqu'au bout de leurs rêves et de leurs passions.

L'accident

În Accidentul, Nora sare stângaci din tramvai și este ajutată să se ridice de Paul, avocat de succes, însă nefericit sentimental, care o conduce până acasă. Tânăra profesoară i se dăruiește spontan, deși devotamentul și răbdarea ei îl lasă multă vreme indiferent pe mizantropul Paul. În cele din urmă, Nora îi propune o excursie la schi, în mijlocul naturii somptuoase de pe Valea Prahovei, cu intenția vădită de a-l vindeca de depresia suferită ca urmare a iubirii pentru pictorița Ann. Accidentul, cel mai popular roman al lui Mihail Sebastian, înfăţişează iubirea cu toate meandrele ei și alegerile hotărâtoare în fața cărora sunt puse personajele feminine. Ultimul roman al lui Mihail Sebastian poate fi citit în nenumărate chei. (...) Astfel, Accidentul va fi – pe rând sau simultan – roman sportiv, roman erotic, roman post-proustian al geloziei, roman gotic, stând sub semnul Nibelungilor lui Richard Wagner, roman inițiatic al salvării spirituale, roman utopic, eliberat din sociologia strictă a realismului, roman al celebrării aventurii.

Fiction. Translated by Christina Tudor-Sideri. The late Mihail Sebastian's brief 1932 book available in English for the first time."One November evening (in circumstances that would take too long to narrate here) I found in Paris, on the Mirabeau Bridge, a notebook with black, glossy, oilcloth covers, like the ones in which grocers used to keep accounts. There were exactly 126 pages--commercial paper--filled with small writing, streamlined, without erasures. A curious reading, tiring in places, obscure passages, notations that appeared foreign to me, in fact even absolutely contrasting."--Mihail Sebastian

Fragments from a Found Notebook

Jocul de-a vacanța; Steaua fără nume

Nae Ionescu

De două mii de ani...

texte, fapte, oameni

Cum am devenit huligan

This book is a chronicle of the dark years of Nazism by the Romanian Jewish writer, Mihail Sebastian.

Journal, 1935-1944

A rediscovered classic from the author of For Two Thousand Years, this remarkable novel presents nuanced snapshots of love in the early twentieth century. Stefan Valeriu, a young man from Romania who has just completed his medical studies in Paris, spends his vacation in the Alps, where he quickly becomes entangled with three different women. We follow Stefan after his return to Paris as he reflects on the women in his life, at times playing the lover, and at others observing shrewdly from the periphery. Women's four interlinked stories offer moving, strikingly modern portraits of romantic relationships in all their complexity, from unrequited loves and passionate affairs to tepid marriages of convenience. In the same eloquent style that would characterize his later, more political writings, Mihail Sebastian explores longing, otherness, empathy, and regret.

Mihail Sebastian

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