Novel
Zbor frînt
Not translated into English
Vladimir Beșleagă · 1966
Synopsis
During the war, Isai, thirteen, looks for his little brother Ile, who has gone towards the Dniester to get back a requisitioned horse; wanting to return to his native village, on the right bank of the river, from which his family has been evacuated, he is arrested by a Soviet officer and taken to headquarters. Years later, the adult Isai goes back over these crossings as he talks to his son; the narrative moves from the adolescent to the mature man, from facts to memories, and memory prevails over action.
Context
Written from April to June 1965 and published in 1966 by Cartea Moldovenească, the novel broke with socialist realism through its superimposed timelines and its psychological analysis; according to its author, cited by Limba Română, the official critics saw in it a subversive novel. Aliona Grati reads it as a narrative of several voices, in which the Dniester marks the border between two worlds. It was reissued in 1992 in a volume in the Latin alphabet, by Hyperion.
Who it is for
In Romanian; the reader must accept the breaks in time and the back-and-forth between the child and the adult.
Prizes and reception
Ion Simuț describes it as showing great narrative virtuosity and regards its author as the most important Bessarabian prose writer of the twentieth century.