The Lair (First Edition)

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 intricate: 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.

Norman Manea is Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer-in-residence at Bard College. Deported from his native Romania to a Ukrainian concentration camp during World War Two, he was again forced to leave Romania in 1986, no longer safe under an intolerant Communist dictatorship. Since arriving in the West he has received many important awards, including, in 2016, Romania’s highest distinction, the Presidential Order “The Romanian Star” in the highest level, of Great Officer. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City. Oana Sânziana Marian is a poet, translator, photographer, and filmmaker.