Conferences
Norman Manea: The Exiled Language
Mr. Norman Manea will be holding the conference titled “The Exiled Language” on Sunday, 18th May 2014, at 11:00 a.m., in the Small Hall of the National Theatre in Bucharest. The price of a ticket is 16 lei.
About the conference
The writer Norman Manes, who has been living for over 25 years in New York, has achieved a great literary reputation in the United States, as well as in Europe. During his exile, he took away with him his home, namely his language – as he often admits it himself – just as a snail always carries his home with him in his journeys, and he continued to write his prodigious work in Romanian.
In his lecture at the National Theatre of Bucharest, Norman Manea will be illustrating the old, but also more and more timely theme of exile through the evolution of his creation. His retrospective and introspection portray a troubling image of the strain and traumas caused by the linguistic dislocation and dispossession, but also of the stimulation through alienation and cultural rebirth. The dramatic and fascinating adventure of the “exiled language” lends a new dimension to the affiliation to a centrifugal and globalized world in the contemporary reality.
Translated by: Bianca-Lidia Zbarcea
MTTLC, University of Bucharest
About Mr. Norman Manea
Norman Manea is the most translated Romanian author and a winner of multiple international prizes: the MacArthur Fellowship (“the American Nobel Prize”), the Nonino International Literary Prize and the Prix Médicis Étranger. He has been a favourite candidate to the Nobel Prize in Literature in recent years, alongside writers like Philip Roth and Haruki Murakami.
Norman Manea (born 1936), one of the most appreciated Romanian writers of prose and essays, is a professor of European literature and a writer in residence at Bard College in New York. From his 1966 debut until 1986 he published 10 books and received the Bucharest Writers’ Association Award (1979) and the Writers’ Union of Romania Award (1984, annulled by the Council of Socialist Culture and Education).
In 1992 he received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, in 1993 he received the New York Public Library Literary Lion Medal. In 2002 he was awarded the Nonino International Literary Prize for his Opera Omnia and, in 2006 he received the Prix Médicis Étranger. He was also elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 2009 he received the rank of Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government. He was awarded the Literary Prize of the Foundation of French Judaism, an honour also bestowed upon George Perec and Emmanuel Levinas.
Books published at Polirom: The Hooligan’s Return (first edition, 2003; second edition, 2006, 2008, 2011), Envelopes and Portraits (2004, second edition soon to be published), Compulsory Happiness (second edition, 2005, 2011), On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist (2005, 2013), The Apprenticeship Years of Augustus the Fool (2005, 2010), The Black Envelope (fourth edition, 2007, 2010), The Drawers of Exile: Dialogue with Leon Volovici (2008), Before Parting: Conversation with Saul Bellow (2008), Talking to a Stone (2008), Atrium (second edition, 2008), Variations on a Self-Portrait (2008), The Lair (first edition, 2009, second edition, 2010), The Eastern Messenger (dialogue with Edward Kanterian) (2010), Conversation in exile (dialogue with Hannes Stein) (2011), Captives (second edition, 2011), Book of the Son (second edition, 2012) and The Days and the Game (second edition, 2012).
In 2008, the Polirom Publishing House launched a Norman Manea author series.
Soon to be published: Envelopes and Portraits
Translated by: Diana-Crezante Raicev
MTTLC, The University of Bucharest
