Stela

by Anca Cristofovici

Years after her mother's disappearance from an unnamed city in an unnamed country governed by a repressive regime, a young dancer, Cora, struggles to untangle the knot of half-truths and informational gaps surrounding the official story. Thoughtful, inventive, and beautifully lyric, Anca Cristofovici's novel Stela masterfully challenges the obfuscations of state terror and its long rolls of the disappeared with the liberating and illuminating transformations of dreams and art.

166 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2015

Reviews

[Patrik Sampler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stela is lyrical, but never overwrought. It begins unsettling, uncanny. Surreal, even mildly sinister images and confounding narration. Exactly the kind of writing I savour. By the last third, however, it is clear and naturalistic--naturally, I feel, the same way a song like "Stand!" (Sly and the Family Stone) necessitates its break: intensity has to resolve somewhere. There isn't much more I can relate that the cover blurbs don't already convey ("scraps of paper drifting down from a library whose collection has burned", "a novel of exception"). Smart writing that deserves more bandwidth.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cristofovici uses a compressed lyrical surrealism to explore the nature of totalitarianism, fear, family, narrative, memory, and art.