Manea norman biography

Norman Manea was.
Norman Manea is a Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile.
Norman Manea was born in 1936 in the Romanian province of Bukovina.

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Norman Manea

Ovidiu Morar¹

Abstract. After reading Norman Manea’s writings, one can notice that their major theme, that is, the main obsession of the author is the exile, as he has always considered himself an éxilé (exiled man), no matter where he happened to live. Both his fiction and his essays are autobiographical, speaking of the author’s traumatizing existential experiences: as a child, he faced the anti-Semitic laws culminating in the deportation in Transnistria, then the impossibility of re-integration in a still hostile society; as an adult, he suffered the trauma of yet another totalitarian regime (the communist dictatorship); and as an old man, that of the impossibility to adapt to the consumerist society that offered him refuge.

Keywords: Romanian literature, exile, Jew, anti-Semitism, totalitarianism, trauma

Resumen. La lectura de la obra de Norman Manea permite establecer que el tema fundamental de la misma, la obsesión principal del autor, es el exilio; que siempre se ha considerado a sí mismo un

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On Writing, the Illness and the Therapy: An Interview with Norman Manea

Original photo by Isolde Ohlbaum.

Norman Manea was born in 1936 in the Romanian province of Bukovina. As a child, he was deported with his parents to a concentration camp in Transnistria, the area of Ukraine that Hitler handed over to Romanian governance during WWII. After the war, Manea continued to confront anti-Semitism under Romania’s fierce communist dictatorship, particularly from the 1960s onward, when he began publishing writings critical of the government and refused to comply with censors. Eventually, government persecution and the receipt of a DAAD grant from Germany led to Manea’s emigration in 1986, and in 1988, he came to the U.S. on a Fulbright Scholarship before becoming a professor and writer in residence at Bard College.

His novels, short stories, and essays typically draw from his experiences with totalitarianism and his later life as a writer in exile living in the United States. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages and in recent years, international critics hav

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Norman Manea

Romanian writer (born 1936)

Norman Manea (Romanian pronunciation:[ˈnormanˈmane̯a]; born 19 July 1936) is a Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He lives in the United States, where he is a Professor and writer in residence at Bard College.

He left Romania in 1986 with a DAAD-Berlin Grant and in 1988 went to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship at the Catholic University in Washington DC. He won the 2002 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Manea's most acclaimed book, The Hooligan's Return (2003), is an original fictionalized memoir, encompassing a period of almost 80 years, from the pre-war period, through the Second World War, the communist and post-communist years to the present.

Manea has been known and praised as an internationally important writer since the early 1990s, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages.^[1] He has received more than 20 awards and honours.

Early years

Born to Jewish parents in the Bur