Books

Books about Romania in English No. 5: The Last Hundred Days, by Patrick McGuinness

by Craig Turp September 25, 2011 Books

 There are so few English novels set in Bucharest that when we heard of the existence of this book we got rather excited. So excited in fact that we went to the UK shortly afterwards with ‘Buy that book’ top of the To Do list. In our excitement, however, we promptly forgot to buy it. [...]

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Great books about Romania in English

by Craig Turp May 25, 2011 Books

 So far we have published four lengthy reviews of great books about Romania in English: Romania: Borderland of Europe By Lucian Boia Rates of Exchange By Malcolm Bradbury Romania and the European Union: How the Weak Vanquisjed the Strong By Tom Gallagher Along the Enchanted Way By William Blacker Over the next couple of months [...]

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The SSEES archive online

by Craig Turp May 18, 2011 Books

 Rejoice and prepare for some serious amounts of time wasting: SSEES – the University of London college where Bucharest Life once learnt Romanian – has placed much of its documentary archive online. You can access it here. The official blurb: UCL SSEES Library is very pleased to announce that almost all the library’s content digitised [...]

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Great books about Romania in English No. 4: Along the Enchanted Way

by Craig Turp September 20, 2010 Books

  Along the Enchanted Way By William Blacker Apparently, in 1997, planes bound for Romania departed from the great media and financial centres of the western world carrying a sinister cargo: slick advertising executives hell bent on selling Romania’s dirt poor yet blissfully happy peasants all sorts of evil goods (such as – God forbid [...]

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Great books about Romania in English No. 3: Romania and the EU. How the Weak Vanquished the Strong

by Christopher Lawson August 27, 2010 Books

  Romania and the European Union: How the Weak Vanquisjed the Strong By Tom Gallagher Reviewed by Christopher Lawson What are the key events in Romania over the last 20 years? This is a much abbreviated version. For 10 of those years, the former minor functionary and Ceausescu lieutenant Ion Iliescu held power. Communism was [...]

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Great Books in English about Romania No. 2: Rates of Exchange, by Malcolm Bradbury

by Craig Turp April 27, 2010 Books

  Rates of Exchange By Malcolm Bradbury First, a classic communist joke: “Why is Slaka like America?” “Because in America you can criticise America, and in Slaka you can criticise America too.” OK. So it goes without saying that this novel (from which we pinched the joke) by one of Britain’s finest 20th century writers, [...]

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Great Books in English about Romania No. 1: Romania, by Lucian Boia

by Craig Turp January 26, 2010 Books

 Romania: Borderland of Europe By Lucian Boia Or, Everything You Thought You Knew About Romania Is Wrong. For this is a book that smashes down every cliché, exposes every myth and just about turns the Romania we thought we knew on its head. An iconoclastic work – Lucian Boia appears to take much pleasure in [...]

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