Daniela Lungu

The Colony of Demons Daniela Lungu

"The Colony of Demons" by Romanian writer Daniela Lungu talks about various ways of reaching God and chasing away "the fallen one". The Colony is a place in Northern Romania where people left hopeless by secular medicine go to be exorcised. Mary-Magdalene is a brilliant gynecologist researching infertility and bringing babies into the world for women who, apparently, have no hope left. She, herself, is sterile, but one of her in vitro self-performed fertilizations is successful. Unfortunately, the baby is stillborn. Magda realizes that God is upset with her and she tries to gain His benevolence. She begins a terrible chase in order to understand God and make amends with him, to work things out in harmony. She has an angelic revelation in a church. The angel advises her to go into a colony of demonized people, tended by an exorcist priest. Various love and hatred stories happen among the members of the colony. Magda goes from agony to ecstasy, makes peace with God and finds her much-longed-for child, as she delivers a baby-boy by another woman. Everyone agrees she should adopt the baby. She disappears from the colony along with the child and nobody knows where she is gone.