The Last Hundred Days
A Novel
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
Once the gleaming "Paris of the East," Bucharest in 1989 is a world of corruption and paranoia, in thrall to the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceau?escu. Old landmarks are falling to demolition crews, grocery shelves are empty, and informants are everywhere. Into this state of crisis, a young British man arrives to take a university post he never interviewed for. He is taken under the wing of Leo O'Heix, a colleague and master of the black market, and falls for the sleek Celia, daughter of a party apparatchik. Yet he soon learns that in this society, friendships are compromised, and loyalty is never absolute. And as the regime's authority falters, he finds himself uncomfortably, then dangerously, close to the eye of the storm.
By turns thrilling and satirical, studded with poetry and understated revelation, The Last Hundred Days captures the commonplace terror of Cold War Eastern Europe. Patrick McGuinness's first novel is unforgettable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Acclaimed poet McGuinness's autobiographical fiction debut blends doomed romance with the police state intrigues of Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania leading up to the 1989 revolution. The unnamed narrator, a young British dropout, is surprised to land a teaching job at the University of Bucharest. Once there, he falls in with Leo O'Heix, a fellow lecturer who runs a sideline supplying luxury goods to the communist elite, and becomes smitten with the enigmatic Cilea, the pampered daughter of a party official. McGuinness, who lived in Bucharest in the 1980s, shines particularly when detailing daily life in this one-time "Paris of the East," from Bucharest's aroma of "petrol fumes" and "the juice of rubbish bins" to musings about the ordinariness of being followed by the authorities "once the clandestine savour has passed, it becomes another of life's minor reassurances." Ceausescu's Bucharest emerges as if from a sad and mysterious time capsule. There are shortcomings: Cilea, the most interesting character after the city itself, disappears halfway; and Leo's pontifications, including a reading of "Shelley's Ozyman-descu," underscore the ironies too heavily. Still, the novel is stylish and of lasting value to readers interested in the twilight of the Eastern Bloc.
