The Hooligan's Return

About the Author and Translator

NORMAN MANEA, Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer in residence at Bard, is a Romanian novelist and essayist. He is the most translated and rewarded Romanian contemporary writer and has been frequently considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Making his debut as a writer in 1960s communist Romania, he produced a string of aesthetically challenging and socially critical works and was forced to leave Romania in 1986. His writings have been translated into more than twenty languages, and he has received many important cultural and literary prizes, including the MacArthur Fellowship (U.S.), the Nonino International Literary Prize (Italy), the Prix Médicis Etranger (France), and the Nelly Sachs prize (Germany). He is a member of the Berlin Academy of Art and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the French government has named him Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

ANGELA JIANU is a translator and historian who currently teaches at the University of Warwick (U.K.). She is the author of A Circle of Friends: Romanian Revolutionaries and Political Exile, 1840–1859.