Female novelists are seldom praised for writing vivid male characters; perhaps because they’ve been doing it well for so long . . . Yet Adameşteanu must be singled out for creating Manu Traian. Part heroic exile, part sentimental old fool, part scholarly genius, part insensitive patriarch—Manu is a marvelously realized character, someone at once irreducible to words yet vividly understood.

Read the rest of Ratik Asokan’s review at Asymptote.


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