Novel
Zenobia
Gellu Naum · 1985
Synopsis
On a winter night, the narrator, who bears the author's name, meets Mr Sima, then a young woman whom he calls Zenobia and with whom he falls in love. With Dragoș, who seems dead, the three of them live in a burrow in the middle of the marshes, before making their way to Bucharest and the studio of a painter friend. According to Kirkus, the narrator, a poet who no longer writes, scans the newspapers for strange events and comes across talkative corpses, distorted figures of his past; Zenobia embodies for him a woman-spirit who seduces him, supports him and frightens him.
Context
The only novel by its author, the book appeared in 1985 from Cartea Românească; the character of Zenobia is modelled on Lyggia Naum, a painter and the writer's wife. According to The Complete Review, the narrative has seven chapters of numbered sections, between which fake news dispatches are interspersed, often devoted to animals, as The Modern Novel also notes. Kirkus compares it to Beckett, Gombrowicz and Ionesco. It appeared in 1995 in English, translated by James Brook and Sasha Vlad, and in French, translated by Luba Jurgenson and Sebastian Reichmann, with a French reissue in 2015.
Who it is for
A surrealist novel in short sections, in copyright; readable in French and in English since 1995.
Prizes and reception
The Complete Review sees it as a demanding and largely successful surrealist experiment, often disorienting.
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