The first season of LIFE ANEW. Writers Imagine the World after the Pandemic, the online series that we created together with the National Museum of Romanian Literature, concludes with RADU PAVEL GHEO, one of the most original and influential voices in Romania’s contemporary literature, whose short prose was translated into English by Romanian-American writer and translator ANDREEA SCRIDON.
In times of calamity and social distress, it was often the writers who were called to imagine how the world would heal its wounds and begin again. Inspired by the creative examples of the past, we have summoned an extraordinary ensemble of authors and translators and challenged them to picture by way of prose and poetry how life re-emerging from the black silence of the pandemic may look like.
RADU PAVEL GHEO (b. Oravița, Romania, 1969) is a prolific novelist, essayist, and translator. He is the author ofValea Cerului Senin / The Valley of the Clear Sky(Athena, 1997),Despre science fiction / On Science Fiction(Omnibooks, 2001; Tritonic, 2007),Adio, adio, patria mea cuîdini, cuâdina /A Farewell to Homeland(Polirom, 2003; 2004; 2013),Românii e deştepţi. Clişee mioritice / Romanians are Smart. Mioritical Clichés(Polirom 2004; 2006; 2014),Fairia– o lume îndepărtată /Fairia – A Far Away World(Polirom, 2004; 2016),DEX-ul şi sexul / The DEX and the Sex(Polirom, 2005; 2016),Tovarăşe de drum. Experienţa feminină în comunism / Road Companions. The Feminine Experience in Communism(Polirom, 2008, a volume coordinated together with Dan Lungu),Numele mierlei / The Name of the Blackbird(Polirom, 2008),Noapte bună, copii! / Good Night, Children!(Polirom, 2010; 2017),Disco Titanic(Polirom, 2016),Străin în țară străină / An Alien in a Foreign Country(The West University in Timișoara Publishing House, Timișoara, 2017).Disco Titanicwas nominated on the short list of all major literary prizes in Romania and was awared the National Prize for Fiction by The Cultural Observatory Magazine and the Romanian Writers’ Union Timișoara.Tiuk!Magazine declared it The Book of the Year in 2016. The previous novel,Good Night, Children!,won the Romanian Writers’ Union Timișoara Grand Prize and the National Prize for Fiction awarded by The Iași Newspaper (2011).Road Companionswas published in Italian in 2011 (Sandro Teti Editore, Rome), andGood Night, Children!was translated into Italian in 2016 (La Zisa Publishing House, Palermo), and in Spanish in 2020 (Tres Hermanas Publishing House, Madrid). Currently, Radu Pavel Gheo lives in Giroc, a suburb of Timișoara, in western Romania. He is a book editor and literary translator for Polirom Publishing House. He writes a weekly opinion column for The Cultural Supplement and Orizont Magazine. In 2003 he became a member of the Romanian Writers’ Union and in 2005 of the PEN Club Romania.