Farce

Fiction. Translated from the Romanian by Doru Motz. The author evokes the days surrounding an uprising and subsequent revolution in an Eastern European country at the close of the 80s. The father of one family tells of the transition from communism's mundane trials to the new and fantastic trials of that country's liberation from another "family's" long and ruthless dictatorship. "Between the time when an old world collapses and a new hasn't yet appeared, with the gift of sight and the luck of presence, dip their quills in stellar matter and sketch the future. Carmen Firan has the gift and the timing. Her stories are filled with the magical realism of a place that seems, occasionally, like ultra-realism, and at others, like pure fairy-tale. To be born in-between is a goldmine for writers, but a curse for most people. The unique hybrid creatures that have emerged from the cracks between millennia have been captured here in all their eerieness. You can hear in Firan's prose the turning over of the wheel of time, the changing of once seemingly immutable orders, the anguish of people struggling to escape history and to understand themselves. Her writing lifts the curse, briefly"--Andrei Codrescu.Firan, Carmen is the author of 'Farce' with ISBN 9781881471967 and ISBN 1881471969.