The Farce [Paperback]

Carmen Firan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1881471969 | ISBN-13: 978-1881471967 | Publication Date: January 15, 2002

The author evokes the days surrounding the uprising and subsequent revolution in Bucharest, Romania. The father of one family tells of the transition from communisms mundane trials to the new and fantastic trials of that country'ss liberation from another family'ss long and ruthless dictatorship.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carmen Firan, Romanian born, is a poet, a fiction and a play writer. She has published in her native country twenty books of poetry, novels, essays, and short stories. She is also the author of several plays and film scripts. Since 2000 she has been living in New York. Her writings appear in translation in many literary magazines and in various anthologies in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Canada, U K, and the USA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil (January 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881471969
• ISBN-13: 978-1881471967
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,608,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carmen Firan, born in Romania, is a poet, a fiction and play writer, and a journalist. She has published fifteen books of poetry, novels, essays and short stories. Her writings appear in translation in many literary magazines and in various anthologies in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Canada, U K, and the USA. She lives in New York. Her recent books and publications in the United States of America include: Words and Flesh (Selected Works of Prose, Talisman Publishers) 2008, The Second Life (Columbia University Press) 2005, The Farce, (Spuyten Duyvil) 2004, In The Most Beautiful Life, Umbrage Editions 2003, The First Moment After Death, Writers Club Press, 2001, Accomplished Error, Spuyten Duyvil, 2000. She is a member of PEN American Center, Poetry Society of America and associate editor of Interpoezia literary magazine (New York). She is the co-editor of Naming the Nameless (An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry), Stranger at Home, Poetry with an Accent, Numina Press, 2008, and Born in Utopia (An Anthology of Romanian Modern and Contemporary Poetry), Talisman Publishers, 2006. Her forthcoming book Rock and Dew, (Selected Poems, Sheep Meadow Press) is coming out in 2009.
www.carmenfiran.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful fiction, January 26, 2010

By 

Claudia Moscovici "literature salon" (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Farce (Paperback)

"The Farce" is a beautifully sketched slice of life
which describes the impact of Romania's transition from
a communist dictatorship to its initial efforts to become a capitalist democracy upon a family.
Ms. Firan's writing is not only historically accurate, but also extremely perceptive and rich in its characterizations.
As readers, we become as involved in the psychological struggles of the husband and wife as we do in the greater political events
that shape their lives. Above all, this novel is really well-written. "The Farce" is a work of literary fiction that is economical in its words,
rich in its style, evocative and eloquent.

5.0 out of 5 stars Really good, September 3, 2005

By 

Bob Swain "Seattle" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Farce (Paperback)

I read this book at the same time I read Oriana Fallaci's The Rage and the Pride. At the time Fallaci's book made a bigger impact, but this book has a quiet strength in it that has made it endure in my memory while the Fallaci book has kind of disappeared. The understated brilliance of this book's examination of the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu and its effect on a journalist living with his family in Bucharest is difficult to summarize but the concrete details and warmth of the narration make the book impossible to either forget or to categorize. The ending has left me wondering for a month or two -- as the new age takes over from Marxism as the reigning ideology of the new regime. Farcical, indeed. I'd like to read more of this author.