The Wooden Tongue Speaks: Romanians: Contradictions & Realities - Softcover

Tiganov, Bogdan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0956665802 ISBN 13: 9780956665805

Publisher: Honest Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

This collection of short stories and poetry set in post-Ceauşescu and post-Cold War Romania takes readers on a journey through the author's home town of Brăila in the east of the country. Exiled Romanian author Bogdan Tiganov explores social, religious and political issues with insightful frankness, through an array of colourful characters and narratives focusing on this newly, supposedly liberated world. Tiganov's stories offer an honest and rounded view of immigration like never heard before: the opportunities and the pitfalls, the reasons for and against mass migration, the pains suffered, the euphoric hope and optimism, the naivety and the greed. This revised edition features brand new short stories and a new introduction from the author. Candid and exposing, this warts-and-all look at Romanian life with its dark undercurrent of wit cuts to the very heart of the country's culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Bogdan Tiganov is a writer and artist, born in Brăila, Romania, on August 1, 1981. It was there that he started his lifelong interest in the arts, attending the Nicolai Bălcescu School of Music at the age of seven, where he learned to play piano as well as composing. In London, UK, he studied visual arts under the supervision of Don Pavey, world-renowned expert on colour. Tiganov finished writing and illustrating his first book by the time he was fourteen, and attracted considerable interest from leading children's book publishers.
Since then, he has studied English Literature at degree level, received a CELTA teaching diploma from IH Barcelona, and has had various jobs, including as an English teacher, a call-centre operator, an editorial assistant, and a content editor. His short stories and poems have appeared in magazines and periodicals worldwide.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

It bothers me to think that I was being listened to, that my phones were tapped, my walls too, and the neighbours had glasses up to theirs. In fact the walls were so thin there was no need for glasses. As a boy I could hear how my neighbours upstairs chased each other and the woman screamed: "Help!” But nobody stopped her husband.

I couldn't whisper a joke about Ceausescu without being told to "Shh.” I realised it even then. I knew I couldn't say everything I wanted or everything that came to mouth, but that was fine. I now know not everything that comes to mouth is useful. Not everything, if anything, is worthwhile.

But there in my home, and in my grandparents' home, what was there to listen to? Why would it interest anybody else? Do you want to hear how my parents are unbelievably tired and bad-tempered, shouting at each other because they can't understand each other's point of view? You don't want to hear that. You can hear that in your own home. I certainly didn't want to hear it. Do you want to hear what we're screaming at our new colour television? We're screaming: "Bullshit!” because we no longer believe what you're showing us. You're telling us how everything's rosy and how we're the best but I don't see that on the table. My table's empty and I'm hungry. The electricity's gone off. We light some candles. The walls start shaking and so does the floor. Do you want to listen in to our panic as we hold on to what we have so it doesn't smash on the floor and we lose it all? Nature tells us that we're fragile.

At times, during our exile, we wanted to leave the problems of living in a foreign country as refugees and go back home to what we thought we knew. Would you swap isolation and loneliness for love? The love, we felt, would not come simply from our family, but from the very trees and the earth that uprooted them. The expressions on peoples' faces would make us feel like we belonged. Be it poor, sad, heartbroken, happy, delirious. We had these fantasies. I still get flashes of fantastic euphoria though I know that they're as much bullshit as what the Communists were feeding us.

I've learnt to mistrust the easy answer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Honest Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0956665802
• ISBN 13: 9780956665805
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 204