PAUL EUGEN BANCIU AND THE CITIES OF AFFECTIVE MEMORY
PAUL EUGEN BANCIU AND THE CITIES OF AFFECTIVE MEMORY

Summary/Abstract: Talented storyteller and worldbuilder, Romanian contemporary prose writer Paul Eugen Banciu has created his own mythical topoi. Burna, the fictional town in the author's tetralogy (made up of the novels The Reef, The Feasts, The Ziggurat and The Discreet Demon) is shown as an imago mundi and real character, like James Joyce's Dublin and Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria. Embodiment of its citizens' frailties and errors, Burna combines the symbols of citadel and island. When characters manage to flee their microcosmos, they are doomed to seek an Eldorado bringing them to ruin. The real towns in the novels The Red Salmon and The Very Happy Ones are meant to preserve history and the protagonists' spiritual biographies.

• Details
• Contents