In the aftermath of 1989, Romanian culture entered a profound crisis, triggered by the lack of power that for decades had defined its physiognomy between resistance and compromises, and exacerbated by the controversies surrounding the conduct of the intellectual under the regime and the relations with the culture of exile and the Republic of Moldova (v.), from the literary silence of important writers of the previous period, from the disaffection for literary fiction, overshadowed by other media (cinema, television) and by non-fictional speeches (archival documents, memorials, journalism, politics), and finally from the collapse of the state publishing and book system.
From the early 2000s, in the incipient ‘normality’ induced by the progressive integration into the social, political and economic structures of the Euro-Atlantic space and thanks to the disappointing management of the past and the present by non-fictional discourses, literature has once again established itself as a public space for reflection on Romanian society, its memory and its future. The number of titles and authors published has grown, poetics and themes have diversified. And if the value of the individual works remains sub judice for now, current Romanian literature already has value as a whole as a sociocultural phenomenon, expression of a process of ‘detabuization’ of the Romania (Cordoş 2012) in which both exponents of the ‘literary generations’ of dictatorship and exile participate, deeply marked from the experience of totalitarianism, and representatives of more recent ‘biographical generations’, in whose human and intellectual profile the weight of the totalitarian experience is diminishing compared to that of the experience of post-communism. In a fertile border area there are authors such as the Nobel laureate Herta Müller (v.) And writers of migration such as Cătălin Dorian Florescu, Marius Daniel Popescu, Liliana Lazăr or Felicia Mihali who, while writing in languages other than Romanian, bring often in their thematic works and ‘Romanian’ atmospheres.
According to directoryaah, the “rehabilitation of fiction ” (Simuţ 2004) of the last decade is nourished by the will-need to narrate a past that is already becoming memory, to understand it and share it with those who have lived it and to explain it to young people who are more and more of it. far away, and to tell a present that, in order to look to the future, still has to deal with the legacy of that past. The protagonist is the novel, a fictional and mediated but not adulterated portrait of current Romanian society, of its idiosyncrasies and aspirations, in the forms of a widespread ‘neoverism’ that does not exclude oneiric-hallucinatory contaminations (Aripa dreaptă, 2007, L ‘ right wing, by Mircea Cărtărescu, conclusion of the trilogy Orbitor, Blinding, one of the masterpieces of post-1989 Romanian prose), the fantastic allegory (Teodosie cel mic, 2006, Theodosius the little, by Răzvan Rădulescu, among the most acclaimed novels of the decade 2000-2010) or the magical realism sui generis (Cine adoarme ultimul, 2007, Who falls asleep for last, by Bogdan Popescu; Miruna. O poveste, 2007, trans. It. Miruna. A story, 2014, by Bogdan Suceavă).
The current Romanian novel moves through the autopsy of the day, investigating plots of life ‘inside’ and ‘against’ the story between wars, totalitarianisms, massacres, exiles and diasporas until the revolution and disillusionment of the post-1989 period (eg Simion liftnicul, 2001, 20072, trad. it. The holy the elevator, 2009, Peter Cimpoesu; Întâlnirea, 2003, 20072, trad. it. The meeting, 2010, the Gabriela Adameşteanu; Degete year, 2005, trad. it. Fingers pinkie, 2010, Filip Florian; Cruciada copiilor, 2005, trad. it. the children’s crusade, 2010, Florina Ilis; Asediul Vienei, 2007, the siege of Vienna, by Horia Ursu; I’m a communist grandmother! , 2007, trad. it. I am an old communist, 2009, 20122, by Dan Lungu; Ghost of the Mill, 2008, Il fantasma del mulino, by Doina Ruşti; Vizuina, 2009, trad. it. The Magic Shelter, 2011, by Norman Manea; Medgidia, the city of the afterlife, 2009, Medigidia, the city of judgment, by Cristian Teodorescu; The Book of Whispers, 2009, trans. it. The Book of Whispers, 2011, by Varujan Vosganian; Good night kids! , 2010, Good night, children! , by Radu Pavel Gheo; The root of the bush, 2010, The Broom Root, by Ovid Nimigean; A casa, pe Câmpia Armaghedonului, 2011, A casa, sulla pianura dell’Armageddon, by Marta Petreu; Matei Brunul, 2011, Mattia il Bruno, by Lucian Dan Teodorovici; Negru şi roşu, 2013, Black and Red, by Ioan T. Morar), and the anamnesis of today, exploring the most immediate actuality and its unprecedented social, political and economic scenarios, from cultural otherness to the dynamics of corporatism, from social marginality (all Radu Aldulescu; Soldaţii. Poveste din Ferentari, 2013, I soldati. Storia di Ferentari, by Adrian Şchiop) and from the phenomenon of emigration (Fetiţa care se juca de-a Dieu, 2014, The Girl Who Played God, by Dan Lungu) and Homosexuality (Do not Cross, 2014, by Dora Pavel), until the rewriting of the news story (Spovedanie la Tanacu, 2006, translated into English) Tanacu, 2013, by Tatiana Niculescu-Bran; Lizoanca at 11 years old, 2009, translated by Lisoanca at 11 years old, 2013, by Doina Ruşti).
Alongside the very happy one of prose, the last decade has seen a fertile season of poetry, with the maturation of the ‘2000 generation’ and the most recent debuts (Marius Ianus, Claudiu Komartin, Domnica Drumea, Ruxandra Novac, Dan Sociu, Elena Vlădăreanu, TS Khasis, Dan Coman, Doina Ioanid, Ştefan Manasia, Teodor Dună, Radu Vancu, Răzvan Ţupa, Bogdan Alexandru Stănescu, Andrei Dósa and others) accompanied by new evidence of already established authors (among many, Ana Blandiana, Patria mea A4, 2010, trad. it. my home A4, 2015, Ion Mureşan; Marta Petreu; Denisa Comanescu, which see Back from exile. Anthology poetic, 2015; Angela Marinescu, Liviu Ioan Stoiciu or Traian T. Coșovei), and above all of dramaturgy, with the world-famous Francophone author Matei Vişniec (see the collection of four of his theatrical texts translated into Italian The history of communism told to mind and other theatrical texts, 2012), also novelist and poet, and other authors who established themselves especially in the early 2000s (Gianina Cărbunariu, Kebab, 2004, trans. it. in Three meters below, 2008; Şţefan Peca, Gabriel Pintilei, Maria Manolescu , Mihaela Michailov, Lia Bugnar, Nicoleta Esinencu, Mihai Ignat, Andreea Vălean, Vera Ion or Ioan Peter).
