Novel
Ancuta's Inn
Hanul Ancuței
Mihail Sadoveanu · 1928
Synopsis
One golden autumn, in Ancuța's inn in Moldavia, travellers gather around wine and tell one another nine stories, most of them drawn from their youth. According to Paul Cernat, the carters there take up to the mountain the wine of an abundant harvest, and the storytellers are shepherds, peasants, a pedlar, a monk, a merchant or a blind beggar. The comis Ioniță opens the circle: as a young man, he set out to ask the prince for justice in a land dispute and, on the way, confided his anger to a stranger he met at the inn. He then keeps promising a story finer than the others.
Context
The tales first appeared as a serial in Viața Românească, then in volume form in 1928, the year in which the Bulgarian Iordan Iovkov also published a book of stories grouped around an inn. According to Paul Cernat, the author drew them from his own memories and from the accounts that elders, his father included, had given him, and presented the book as a novel. George Călinescu made it in 1941 a Moldavian Decameron; Cernat discusses this comparison, since here it is a matter of nine guests gathered in a single evening. A French translation appeared in Paris from Didier in 1943, another in Bucharest in 1953.
Who it is for
Nine stories told in turn in an inn, following the old Moldavian oral tradition; translated into French as early as 1943 and into English in 1954.
Prizes and reception
Paul Cernat sees it as a masterpiece; for a Romanian school resource, it is the most brilliant lyrical-epic creation of its author.
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