Novel
Barefoot
Desculț
Zaharia Stancu · 1948
Synopsis
Darie, a boy of twelve when the narrative begins, grows up in a village on the Romanian plain at the beginning of the twentieth century. His aunt Utupar tells him the family's stories; around him, the peasants endure the boyars, the rich peasants, the priests, then drought, winter and flood, and beds are taken apart to make rafts. Darie goes to school of his own free will, injures his foot and becomes a tanner's apprentice. In 1907, the peasants' revolt breaks out in his village, according to The Modern Novel.
Context
The novel appeared in 1948 from the State Publishing House and, according to Financiarul, opened a cycle devoted to provincial life. Boris Cazacu, who studied its style as early as 1954, notes a laconic, nervous sentence, fed by repetitions, and the use of antithesis, as in the picture of the village in the spring that follows the repression. Claude Sernet translated it into French in 1951; an English version appeared the same year in London from Fore Publications, revised by Jack Lindsay, and another from Twayne in 1971. It has also been translated into Lithuanian and Finnish.
Who it is for
A long peasant novel in the first person, made of scenes rather than plot; readable in French and in English.
Prizes and reception
The Modern Novel counts it among the best peasant novels of Romanian literature.
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