Hooligan's Return (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Hooligan's Return (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) by Manea, Norman. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780300197808.

Romanian exile Norman Maneas internationally acclaimed memoir/novel now available to English-language readers At the center of The Hooligans Return is the author himself always an outcast on a bleak lifelong journey through Nazism and communism to exile in America. But while Norman Maneas book is in many ways a memoir it is also a deeply imaginative work traversing time and place life and literature dream and reality past and present. Autobiographical events merge with historic elements always connecting the individual with the collective destiny. Manea speaks of the bloodiest time of the twentieth century and of the emergence afterward of a global competitive and sometimes cynical modern society. Both a harrowing memoir and an ambitious epic project The Hooligans Return achieves a subtle internal harmony as anxiety evolves into a delicate irony and a burlesque fantasy. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived this is the work of a writer with an acute understanding of the vast human potential for both evil and kindness obedience and integrity.