Romanian writer Norman Manea, one of Romania's proposals for the Nobel prize for literature in 2014, will be back to his home country between April 30 and May 18, when he will also attend several events and meet readers. Manea, the most translated Romanian author, has been living abroad since 1986, when he left the country during the communist regime.

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Upon launching his new book 'Plicuri si portrete' (Envelopes and portraits), Manea will tour Romania's largest cities, according to the Polirom publishing house.

He will be in Sighisoara on April 30 (14,00, City Hall), in Brasov on May 5 (11,00- Transylvania University, 17,00 – St. O Iosif bookshop), in Sibiu on May 6 (14,00 – Lucian Blaga University), in Arad on May 8 (17,00 – City Hall), in Timisoara on May 9 (13,00 – West University; 18,00 – Cartea de Nisip bookshop). Manea will be in Bucharest on May 14, with an event at the National Library starting 17,00, and on May 18, starting 11,00, at the National Theater.

Norman Manea's work, translated into 20 languages, has received high literary international prizes. The 78-year old was born in Suceava, in Northern Romania, to Jewish family.

Deported as a child to a concentration camp in Ukraine, he returned to Romania with the surviving members of his family in 1945. He went on to study in Bucharest and worked as a hydraulic engineer. He started to publish in 1966 and left Romania in 1986, which he described in Royal Society discussion in his honor as something of an “absurdest adventure.”

Manea went to the US on a Fulbright scholarship and has been living there ever since. He now lives with his wife in Manhattan.

Considered to be one of the most well-known and successful contemporary Romanian writers, Manea has received many awards: the MacArthur Fellows Award, The Guggenheim Grant, the Literary Lion Medal of the New York National Library, the National Jewish Book Award and the International Nonino Prize for Literature.

His writings depict the Holocaust, the daily life in a totalitarian communist state and his exile, while also focusing the lenses on the inner life of the individual.

editor@romania-insider.com