October Eight O'Clock - Softcover

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Romanian

A young boy living in a Nazi concentration camp believes that his friend has sickened and died because of her new sweater. When he inherits the sweater, he becomes sure that he is sick and will soon die, too. In another story, the boy watches camp children play a game that simulates death. As a young man, he nearly drowns. With each new story, the boy-narrator grows older, but his obsessions remain the same: the horror of the camps, illness, death, and dehumanization. Romanian expatriate Manea, author of On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist ( LJ 1/92), has admitted that since his time in the camps he has felt as though he were already dead. His stories, often told in the third person, have a detached quality that echoes this feeling and intensifies the nightmare. These powerful pieces will appeal especially to those with an interest in Romania or the Holocaust but will hold their own against the best in short fiction anywhere.
- Ruth M. Ross, Olympic Coll. Lib., Bremerton, Wash.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.