I
have been reading “The Long Shadows” (1997) which is almost a book within several
books as it alternates between three if not four narratives – that of the
English biographer of a writer whose last work was a novel about a young
Romanian woman who visits England in the 1980s. Her character is clearly that
of the young translator who was assigned to the writer when he visited Romania
in the 1980s on a British Council scheme. A good atmosphere of the place and period is
established.
After
completing I googled author Alan Brownjohn’s name since this is the first thing
I have read of his - and discover that
the most substantial material on him has been written – at book length - by
……….a Romanian Professor of English whose elegant, downloadable and highly
readable book has the marvelous title - Alan Brownjohn and the Desperado Age. Her
commentary on The Long Shadows is at pp67-88
And
the book is only part of a much wider “British Desperado” project which has
yielded two other titles from the Contemporary Literature Press of the University of Bucharest - first The Desperado Age – British literature at the start of the new millenium - another downloadable book (with more than 300 pages) which explains her term “desperado”,
locates it in the literary constellation and then assesses the work of 15
writers
and then, the
third title, Desperado Interviews is
400 pages long and consists of interviews with about 50 writers from different
countries. Highly appropriate given the focus of the previous post!!
A real treasure trove of reading! Just the thing as the carpathian mist continues to envelope the house.......
