Radu Pavel Gheo
Biography
Radu Pavel Gheo was born in Oraviţa in 1969. He graduated from the Western University in Timişoara with a Degree in Literature in 1994 and subsequently worked as a teacher and as an editor for radio and magazines in Jassy and Timişoara. In 2001, he emigrated to the United States, but returned to Romania after one year. He describes his experiences in America in Adio, Adio, My Countrie, My Country, published by Polirom in 2003, with a second edition in 2004. His other books include The Valley of the Clear Blue Sky (Athena, 1997), About Science Fiction (Omnibooks, 2001; Tritonic, 2007), Romanians is Clever (Polirom, 2004, 2005), Fairia—A Faraway World (Polirom, 2004), Sex and the Explanatory Dictionary (Polirom, 2005), Lady Fellow Travellers. The Female Experience under...
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Novel, "Ego Prose" series, Polirom, 2010, 496 pages Book presentation
THE NOVEL DESCRIBES the fate of four childhood friends, who experience days of enchanted happiness in their grandparents’ village in the Banat and plan to cross the border clandestinely one night during the Easter of 1986. One of them stays behind and the other three are captured by border guards. The consequences are dire and will scar them forever. Two of the friends, Leo and Cristina, make another attempt to cross the frontier and this time succeed, later settling in Los Angeles. The third, Marius, follows them after the 1989 Revolution. Left behind again, Paul becomes an English teacher and writer in Jassy, where he studied at university. Poor and naïve, Paul places all his hopes in a literary scholarship offered by the enigmatic Mr Dunkelman. At the same time, his friend Marius, now a U.S. citizen, returns to Romania, seeking to take revenge on the border guards from that fateful night in 1986. Marius’ constant companion is a pornographic videocassette, Wild Goose Chase, which has a significant connexion with his life in America. Dunkelman and Marius arrive in Romania at the same time. They meet, just as Marius and Paul will meet again, for the world in which the four friends move is governed by laws other than that of chance. In this way, Paul will find out about what became of his three friends in America (Leo becomes a drug dealer, Cristina a pornographic film actress) and about the tragic death of their friendship. Marius will have his revenge, but he will not elude fate. |
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Novel, "Ego Prose" series, Polirom, 2004, 248 pages Book presentation
The story begins in a medieval world with fairy-tale elements. One night, at a table from a tavern, young Harald, a king’s son, tells his companions a strange story from his childhood: the story of the Iron-Man-with-Ivory-Skin. His story proves to be an account of a spatial expedition, which arrived there from Earth long time ago. Actually, Harald reproduces a story he has learnt by heart. The real story-teller was a man from Earth, Ronnie Peterschneitt, the former commanding officer of an expedition that visited a strange planet, Fairia. Moreover, that strange planet is in fact Harald’s world. |
