Novel
Vestibul
Not translated into English
Alexandru Ivasiuc · 1967
Synopsis
Doctor Ilea, a university lecturer, writes to a student thirty years his junior a series of letters in which he examines himself, according to Paul Cernat cited by Jurnalul. Fear is at the centre, fear of himself, fear of others, absolute fear, which writing tries to name in order to master it. It all begins, according to Ioan Holban, with an episode from childhood, a story of a forest, a game in which a nuance separates the victim from the executioner, and which governed what followed, war as well as love; the student is little more than the projection of his fears and his sense of failure.
Context
The novel appeared in 1967 with the publishing house for literature. For Paul Cernat, it is at once a complicated trial of conscience and a sentimental story, set at the time of the establishment of socialism, and the psychoanalytic autobiography of a failure. Ioan Holban stresses that the narrator, the character and the addressee merge, which makes the book a circular and interiorised text; he also notes, in 2021, that the author's novels are today largely forgotten.
Who it is for
An epistolary novel of ideas, in which analysis outweighs narrative; in Romanian, with no French or English translation found.
Prizes and reception
Writers' Union Prize; Mihaela Malciu sees it as the novel that established its author at once.
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