Novel
Singur în fața dragostei
Not translated into English
Aureliu Busuioc · 1966
Synopsis
Radu Negrescu, a teacher of physics and mathematics, handsome, ironic and sceptical, whom chance has brought to the school in the village of Recea Veche, sees a young teacher, Viorica Vrabie, arrive there. Between the man who refuses all commitment and the courageous young woman, who denounces the school's abuses and reproaches him for his passivity, a love is born that the novel follows through Radu's account and Viorica's diary.
Context
Published in 1966 by Cartea Moldovenească, the novel has gone through twelve editions, the latest from Cartier in 2024. Its heroes are intellectuals rather than peasants, a novelty against the village prose of the time, and critics read in it a break with socialist realism, in favour of psychological analysis, irony and play. It has been likened to Camil Petrescu's Patul lui Procust. It has been translated neither into French nor into English.
Who it is for
For reading an ironic, lucid love story in which intelligence collides with feeling in Soviet Moldova.
Prizes and reception
The critic Eugen Lungu sees Radu Negrescu as an atypical hero, sceptical and detached; Emilia Grigoraș rehabilitates the figure of Viorica.