Romanian Literature awarded in Brussels
Romanian writer Ioana Parvulescu has received the European Union prize for literature.
Roxana Vasile, 27.11.2013, 13:18
For those who love Bucharest and the kind of prose that recreates the atmosphere of the year 1897- as literary critic Dan C. Mihailescu said- Ioana Parvulescu issued in 2009 the novel entitled “Life Starts on Friday”. A man is found unconscious in a field near the capital Bucharest. Nobody knows who he is and people have their own suspicions. Is he an international racketeer who’s hiding? A criminal? A sick person? People start gathering around him: a physician and his daughter, a policeman, an 8-year old errand boy who’s running errands throughout Bucharest and last but not least journalists from a periodical of the time called Universul.
The action of the novel, with its alert style, detective story plot and lively characters occurs in only 13 days: from Friday 19th December until the end of the year. The atmosphere of Bucharest on the eve of the turn of the century is recreated like in a movie. With this novel, Ioana Parvulescu was among the 12 winners of the European Union Awards for Literature granted in Brussels.
Here she is next: “I feel great now that I’ve overcome my emotions. It’s not easy to represent a country; it is for the first time that I officially represent Romania and I have been fully aware of my mission.”
Ioana Parvulescu teaches modern Romanian literature at the Faculty of Letters of Bucharest University. For 18 years she worked as an editor for the Romania Literara journal to which she contributed weekly. She also worked for the Humanitas publishers where she initiated and coordinated the collection “The book on the bedside table”. With the novel “Life Starts on Friday” she made her debut in fiction writing after she had tried her hand at essay writing.
Ioana Parvulescu: “I have not been much of a critic. I have been trained as a critic but I have actually written essays, literary history articles, and now I’m writing fiction with great pleasure.”
