Norman Manea

Captives Norman Manea

A stunning novel set in postwar Romania about language, identity, and loss.

Stylistically innovative and verbally imaginative, Captives is divided into three interrelated sections, narrated in first-, second-, and third-person voices. In this novel, the acclaimed writer Norman Manea explores the social and psychological conditions of postwar Romania: loss of identity; a complicated sense of guilt, trauma, and aggression from having survived the fascist government during World War II; and the rise of communism (and with it, similar echoes of totalitarianism).

Captives is kaleidoscopic, imagistic, and fragmented through recurring characters and images: an alienated piano teacher, an engineer reflecting on his youth, and a captain who survived World War II but couldn?t handle everyday life afterward.