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The Lair
Now available for the first time in English, Manea's acclaimed novel of émigrés in America, free yet imprisoned by the past
“As in all [Manea’s] work, we find the defining experiences of the twentieth century . . . filtered through the sensibility of one of its most astute survivors.”—Costa Bradatan, Times Literary Supplement
Norman Manea, Romania’s most famous contemporary author, twice has survived the grip of totalitarian regimes. No stranger to exile, he mines its complexities and disorientations in this extraordinarily compelling novel, The Lair . Exile in the motherland and away from it is the shared plight of his protagonists. Nowhere at home, they move through their lives in a continuous, ever-elusive quest for national and individual identity. Manea’s characters seek a place and a voice in America, only to discover that the shackles of their native totalitarian and nationalist ideologies are impossible to break.
Manea’s themes and narrative approach are his style fluctuates in correspondence with the instability of his characters’ lives, his story encased within an elaborate network of allusions and paradoxes. Yet in the midst of the novel’s overriding disorientation, the author establishes intersections and uncovers the universal. Through the predicaments of his perpetual outsiders, he offers a poignant assessment of the conflicts of the individual in the age of globalization. He writes with unmatched intensity and a unique sensitivity to the human tragicomedy.
“As in all [Manea’s] work, we find the defining experiences of the twentieth century . . . filtered through the sensibility of one of its most astute survivors.”—Costa Bradatan, Times Literary Supplement
Norman Manea, Romania’s most famous contemporary author, twice has survived the grip of totalitarian regimes. No stranger to exile, he mines its complexities and disorientations in this extraordinarily compelling novel, The Lair . Exile in the motherland and away from it is the shared plight of his protagonists. Nowhere at home, they move through their lives in a continuous, ever-elusive quest for national and individual identity. Manea’s characters seek a place and a voice in America, only to discover that the shackles of their native totalitarian and nationalist ideologies are impossible to break.
Manea’s themes and narrative approach are his style fluctuates in correspondence with the instability of his characters’ lives, his story encased within an elaborate network of allusions and paradoxes. Yet in the midst of the novel’s overriding disorientation, the author establishes intersections and uncovers the universal. Through the predicaments of his perpetual outsiders, he offers a poignant assessment of the conflicts of the individual in the age of globalization. He writes with unmatched intensity and a unique sensitivity to the human tragicomedy.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
7 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Norman Manea
66 books76 followersNorman Manea is a Jewish Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He lives in the United States, where he is the Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer in residence at Bard College.
He left Romania in 1986 with a DAAD-Berlin Grant and in 1988 went to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship at the Catholic University in Washington DC.
Manea's most acclaimed book, The Hooligan’s Return (2003), is an original novelistic memoir, encompassing a period of almost 80 years, from the pre-war period, through the Second World War, the communist and post-communist years to the present.
Manea has been known and praised as an international important writer since early 1990s, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has received more than 20 awards and honors.
Born in Suceava (Bukovina, Romania), Manea was deported as a child, in 1941, by the Romanian fascist authorities, allied with Nazi Germany, to the concentration camp of Transnistria in the Ukraine with his family and the entire Jewish population of the region. He returned to Romania in 1945 with the surviving members of his family and graduated with high honors from the high school in his home town, Suceava. He studied engineering at the Construction Institute in Bucharest and graduated with master’s degree in hydro-technique in 1959, working afterwards in planning, fieldwork and research. He has devoted himself to writing since 1974.
Manea’s literary debut took place in Povestea Vorbii (The Tale of Word, 1966), an avant-garde and influential magazine that appeared in the early years of cultural liberalization in communist Romania and was suppressed after six issues. Until he was forced into exile (1986) he published ten volumes of short fiction essays and novels. His work was an irritant to the authorities because of the implied and overt social-political criticism and he faced a lot of trouble with the censors and the official press. At the same time that sustained efforts were made by the cultural authorities to suppress his work, it had the support and praise of the country’s most important literary critics.
After the collapse of the Ceaușescu dictatorship, several of his books started to be published in Romania. The publication in a Romanian translation of his essay Happy Guilt, which first appeared in The New Republic, led to a nationalist outcry in Romania, which he in turn has analysed in depth in his essay Blasphemy and Carnival. Echoes of this scandal can still be found in some articles of the current Romanian cultural press.
Meantime, in the United States and in European countries, Manea’s writing was received with great acclaim. Over the past two decades he has been proposed as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature by literary and academic personalities and institutions in the United States, Sweden, Romania, Italy and France. Important contemporary writers expressed admiration of the author’s literary work and his moral stand before and after the collapse of communism: the Nobel laureates Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Octavio Paz, Orhan Pamuk, as well as Philip Roth, Claudio Magris, Antonio Tabucchi, E. M. Cioran, Antonio Munoz Molina, Cynthia Ozick, Louis Begley and others.
He left Romania in 1986 with a DAAD-Berlin Grant and in 1988 went to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship at the Catholic University in Washington DC.
Manea's most acclaimed book, The Hooligan’s Return (2003), is an original novelistic memoir, encompassing a period of almost 80 years, from the pre-war period, through the Second World War, the communist and post-communist years to the present.
Manea has been known and praised as an international important writer since early 1990s, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has received more than 20 awards and honors.
Born in Suceava (Bukovina, Romania), Manea was deported as a child, in 1941, by the Romanian fascist authorities, allied with Nazi Germany, to the concentration camp of Transnistria in the Ukraine with his family and the entire Jewish population of the region. He returned to Romania in 1945 with the surviving members of his family and graduated with high honors from the high school in his home town, Suceava. He studied engineering at the Construction Institute in Bucharest and graduated with master’s degree in hydro-technique in 1959, working afterwards in planning, fieldwork and research. He has devoted himself to writing since 1974.
Manea’s literary debut took place in Povestea Vorbii (The Tale of Word, 1966), an avant-garde and influential magazine that appeared in the early years of cultural liberalization in communist Romania and was suppressed after six issues. Until he was forced into exile (1986) he published ten volumes of short fiction essays and novels. His work was an irritant to the authorities because of the implied and overt social-political criticism and he faced a lot of trouble with the censors and the official press. At the same time that sustained efforts were made by the cultural authorities to suppress his work, it had the support and praise of the country’s most important literary critics.
After the collapse of the Ceaușescu dictatorship, several of his books started to be published in Romania. The publication in a Romanian translation of his essay Happy Guilt, which first appeared in The New Republic, led to a nationalist outcry in Romania, which he in turn has analysed in depth in his essay Blasphemy and Carnival. Echoes of this scandal can still be found in some articles of the current Romanian cultural press.
Meantime, in the United States and in European countries, Manea’s writing was received with great acclaim. Over the past two decades he has been proposed as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature by literary and academic personalities and institutions in the United States, Sweden, Romania, Italy and France. Important contemporary writers expressed admiration of the author’s literary work and his moral stand before and after the collapse of communism: the Nobel laureates Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Octavio Paz, Orhan Pamuk, as well as Philip Roth, Claudio Magris, Antonio Tabucchi, E. M. Cioran, Antonio Munoz Molina, Cynthia Ozick, Louis Begley and others.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
i-want-money
August 31, 2016Romanian. With plenty of his in English. This year he wins the Premio FIL de Literatura en Lenguas Romances.
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June 15, 2013
Norman Manea’s Best Translated Book Award longlisted novel The Lair is a complex head scratcher that strives to be so intellectually stimulating that it borders on being nearly impenetrable. The initial setup is fairly straightforward; everything that follows that is anything but.
Three highly intelligent Romanian émigrés arrive on United States soil and immediately express their disdain for all things capitalism and in a more general sense, the very ways people go about their daily American lives. It’s not all bad though. The three seem enamored with New York City for example, which one of them refers to as “the city on the moon” and there’s a delightful bit towards the end where one of them expresses his belief that the terrorists that were responsible for the horrific 9/11 attacks got it wrong because they toppled the World Trade Center towers, but left the libraries standing untouched and intact.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/the-l...
Three highly intelligent Romanian émigrés arrive on United States soil and immediately express their disdain for all things capitalism and in a more general sense, the very ways people go about their daily American lives. It’s not all bad though. The three seem enamored with New York City for example, which one of them refers to as “the city on the moon” and there’s a delightful bit towards the end where one of them expresses his belief that the terrorists that were responsible for the horrific 9/11 attacks got it wrong because they toppled the World Trade Center towers, but left the libraries standing untouched and intact.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/the-l...
February 20, 2020
I think the novel would have deserved more stars without the last two parts, which in my opinion dragged on unnecessarily, but nevertheless, it was an impressive and complex novel.
This is my first Manea oeuvre and it might seem quite strange to have read it in its English translation. It definitely was for me, weird to see certain typical Romanian constructions and notions being translated. At the time when I bought the book I just remember thinking it would be interesting to read a translation from my mother language, as I normally read so many books translated in Romanian.
This book deals with a lot of themes, combined from both countries: soviet Romania and capitalist America: identity, memory, conspiracies, paranoia, immigration, isolation, old age and other. The style is a bit brutal: it is hard to distinguish at times who is the narrator, the voices of the characters sometimes get confused for one another, their monologues run adrift in short sentences, they barely talk to one another - it's like each is reflecting back on their personal interpretation of the novel's themes. The plot in itself seems undefined and with the change of narrator the reader is often left befuddled. Perhaps it seemed more interesting because of the novelty of the style. I remember feeling the way I did when I watched Legion (tv show). I wasn't sure what I was seeing but I needed to see it to the end.
This is my first Manea oeuvre and it might seem quite strange to have read it in its English translation. It definitely was for me, weird to see certain typical Romanian constructions and notions being translated. At the time when I bought the book I just remember thinking it would be interesting to read a translation from my mother language, as I normally read so many books translated in Romanian.
This book deals with a lot of themes, combined from both countries: soviet Romania and capitalist America: identity, memory, conspiracies, paranoia, immigration, isolation, old age and other. The style is a bit brutal: it is hard to distinguish at times who is the narrator, the voices of the characters sometimes get confused for one another, their monologues run adrift in short sentences, they barely talk to one another - it's like each is reflecting back on their personal interpretation of the novel's themes. The plot in itself seems undefined and with the change of narrator the reader is often left befuddled. Perhaps it seemed more interesting because of the novelty of the style. I remember feeling the way I did when I watched Legion (tv show). I wasn't sure what I was seeing but I needed to see it to the end.
July 26, 2018
This is a translation from Romanian and it definitely took me out of my comfort zone, I needed more understanding of the history of the country to get more out of the book. The writing style was "mystical" which I appreciated was part of the story. Refugees have identities that of necessity they bring with them as they learn to have a new identity in their new country, this I would consider the primary theme.
May 19, 2016
Five stars for the first 100 pages. Then it settled in, but finished very well in my estimation. There were a lot of individual sentences in here that I just loved, which isn't often the case in translated books.
I don't know if I can say much about the plot. Academic Romanian exiles deal with their past and present (often at the same time without always letting the reader know which it is). There's a woman that's connected to all of them. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon happen. There may or may not be a conspiracy to assassinate several of them. Other things.
I'm glad I read this, and I think a second read and careful study would reveal a lot more. Not sure I'll ever get that chance, but it's a nice thought.
I don't know if I can say much about the plot. Academic Romanian exiles deal with their past and present (often at the same time without always letting the reader know which it is). There's a woman that's connected to all of them. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon happen. There may or may not be a conspiracy to assassinate several of them. Other things.
I'm glad I read this, and I think a second read and careful study would reveal a lot more. Not sure I'll ever get that chance, but it's a nice thought.
August 12, 2012
The kind of book you have to adjust to... Such an intense mix of heady and sensory and conceptual. That Eastern European flare for philosophical politics or political philosophies or what have you. Explores concepts of individualism, pragmatism, nationalism, hope, deceit, exile, obituary, book as refuge, the innocent party claiming guilt, transcendentalism, health, longing... The Borges/Labirynth/Minotaur tie in was key for me. Lead protag Professor Gora's insistence that the 9/11 bombers failed because they didn't destroy the Library is sort of the meta of the book, and this aspect is what I loved most about it.
June 18, 2014
Brilliiant!! Norman Manea's writes 4 incredibly different chapters without being trapped in his own stunt. Technically perfect. The Lair is a beautiful story about exile. I loved the philosophical matrix that drives the last two chapters and twists the story at a point that was starting to read almost as a thriller. Existentialism at its best, I'm amazed and I will definitely go through more of his work.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews