The Instinctive Feeling of Innocence is a novel written by Romanian-born writer Dana
\nGrigorcea. Written in German, the novel was translated into Romanian by Nora
\nIuga and Radu-Mihai Alexe and was brought out by the Humanitas Publishers in
\nBucharest. The novel won the 3sat Prize granted as part of the 2015 Ingeborg
\nBachmann literary contest, also receiving a nomination for the Schweizer
\nLiteraturpreis. <\/p>\n
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Dana Grigorcea made her debut as a writer of short
\nfiction in the 1990s, and her works were published in Romania Literara
\nmagazine. Dana Grigorcea read German and Dutch at the University of Bucharest’s
\nForeign Languages Faculty. She went on to study theatre and film directing at
\nBrussels University, then pursued an MA program in journalism at the Danube
\nUniversity in Krems. Dana Grigorcea worked for ARTE TV station in Strasbourg and
\nDeutsche Welle radio broadcaster in Bonn. Since 2007, she has been living in
\nZurich, where she is teaching film language at the Film Faculty of Zurich’s
\nUniversity of the Arts. Dana Grigorcea was a guest in literature programs of
\nthe Swiss DRS national radio broadcaster. <\/p>\n
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Dana Grigorcea and her husband, writer Perikles
\nMonioudis, organise a literary salon and run a literature blog which can be
\naccessed at www.neue-telegramme.ch. Dana Grigorcea made her literary debut in
\nGerman in 2011 with the novel Baba Rada. Life is Temporary and So is the
\nHair on Your Head, for which she won the Literraturperle Swiss Book prize,
\nas well as honorary mentions awarded by the city of Zurich and thecanton of Zurich. <\/p>\n
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In the laudatory speech at the awarding ceremony of
\nthe Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, literary
\ncritic Hildegard Keller emphasised the narrative drive of the novel The Instinctive
\nFeeling of Innocence, as
\nwell as the three perspectives of the narrative, which is told by a feminine self. Keller described the text
\nas an excellent satire exuding an exuberant vitality. With details on that,
\nhere is the translator of the volume into Romanian, Nora Iuga. <\/p>\n
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The translator ends
\nup identifying themselves with the author, since the relationship between the
\ntranslator and the author is a relationship which can be closer than the one
\nbetween mother and daughter, between sister and brother. And that, because we
\nspeak about a bond secured by language, and there is no element more relevant
\nthan the language, by means of which you can relate to someone. Apart from the
\nartistry of the style and the expressive qualities of the book, I can say the
\ntitle of the book drew my attention, because it was so profound. We need to
\nponder on the significance of the title, The Instinctive Feeling of Innocence.
\nI have repeatedly tried to explain to myself what the relationship was between
\nthe title and the topic of the book, between the title and the author’s look
\nback on all those years. For her, the most important years she spent in
\nBucharest were the buildup years as a human being, but also as a woman. And we
\ndiscover, with the help of the book, the kind of place Bucharest was at the
\ntime.<\/p>\n
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The story is set in
\nBucharest in early 2000s. Victoria, fresh from Zurich, witnesses a robbery at
\nthe bank she works for. All of a sudden she is given an unexpected holiday,
\nhaving enough time to walk together with her lover or to roam city streets, all
\nby herself. As she meets old acquaintances from her past, her mind is flooded
\nby the experiences she had as a child, by the times when she discovered the
\nworld, together with her playmates, in the quiet Cotroceni district. It is a
\nnovel about the Bucharest of yesterday and about the Bucharest of today, about
\nthe final years of the communist regime and the chaotic early days of
\ncapitalism, about the miracles of childhood and about self-search. The
\nInstinctive Feeling of Innocence
\nwas received with a lot of enthusiasm by the German press. The volume is
\nimpregnated with melancholy humour, as it depicts scenes from a childhood
\nspent in communist Romania. By constantly switching between narrative levels,
\nthe book makes the transition from a communist childhood to a post-communist
\nreality. It talks about Michael Jackson’s concert in Bucharest, and then it
\nswitches to a discussion about the sex life of the Ceausescu dictatorial
\ncouple, held by a group of young people on the rooftop of the gigantic People’s
\nPalace. We have asked Dana Grigorcea if she has noticed any difference in how
\nher book was received in Romania and Germany:<\/p>\n
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My reception of the
\nnovel depends very much on the readership. People responded to the book
\ndifferently in Germany as they did in Switzerland, for instance. There is a
\nfragment that I read very often, in which I describe how I was made a pioneer
\nin communist Romania and reactions are different every time. In the former
\nDemocratic Republic of Germany people have other reactions than the ones in
\nDusseldorf or Hamburg, for instance, while the Swiss audience also reacts
\ndifferently. There are certain jokes in my novel to which people laugh more in
\nSwitzerland than in Austria. There are certain subtleties that Austrians grasp
\nfaster than the Swiss. So my book heIps me know who my audience is and make an
\nopinion on them, depending on the place where I read my work. <\/p>\n
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With the release of the Romanian version of The
\nInstinctive Feeling of Innocence, readers in Bucharest, Brasov, Timisoara
\nand Cluj had the opportunity to take part in meetings with Dana Grigorcea, such
\nas book launches, autograph sessions and public readings, organised by
\nHumanitas Publishers. The book is due to be translated into English, Dutch and
\nBulgarian. <\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dana Grigorceas award-winning novel in German The Instinctive Feeling of Innocence gets Romanian translation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":161352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[44757],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-161351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture","tag-dana-grigorcea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n