Romania
Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu
Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu , born 1979, has been the editor of prestigious literary translation collection Biblioteca Polirom for the last 12 years. He is a book reviewer for major Romanian publications, the founder and president of the independent international literary festival in Bucharest, FILB, and author of four books, 2 collections of essays, 2 poetry books, and contributor to five anthologies of short stories. He is also the translator of Tennessee Williams, James Joyce, Sandra Newman, Alberto Manguel, Edward Hirsch, William Faulkner, Paul Auster and Daniel Mendelsohn. Bogdan Stanescu won the Best Young Writer of the Year Award in 2015. He has a PhD in Romanian literature and teaches a seminar at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters and creative writing. “The Childhood of Kaspar Hauser” was: • Winner Of The Thoreau Nephew Prize In Romania • Winner Of The Radio Romania Cultural Award For Literature • Laureate Of The Festival Du Premier Roman De Chambery • Winner Of The Ateneu Magazine Prize For Prose • Shortlisted For The European Union Prize For Literature 2019
COPILARIA LUI KASPAR HAUSER (THE CHILDHOOD OF KASPAR HAUSER)
Translation: Ermis Lafazanovski
Written from the double perspective of the child/teenager and the adult, “The childhood of Kaspar Hauser” is a coming-of-age novel as well as a novel about the degradation of a human being (the narrator) under the constant erosion of a complicated family life (involving the absence of his real father, the presence of successive step fathers) and that of the general chaos of Romania of the 1980s and the 1990s.
The child starts telling the story with a very straightforward and sane voice, capturing sensations and images and trying to put them together into a coherent image of reality, but grows into a jaded human being, an alcoholic adult, lost in a seductive but shallow world.
It is a puzzle-novel, a novel of stories, and an attempt to describe one of the darkest moments in recent Romanian history.
The novel has gathered wide critical acclaim in Romania and had to be reprinted three times in only four months.