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Norman Manea, Romania's most famous contemporary author, twice has survived the hold of totalitarian regimes. No stranger to exile, he mines its complexities and disorientations in this extraordinarily powerful book, The Lair. Exile in the motherland and from it is the shared plight of his protagonists. Nowhere at home, they undertake their lives in a continuous, ever-elusive search for national and specific identity. Manea's heroes seek a place and a tone of voice in America, only to find that the shackles of their indigenous totalitarian and nationalist ideologies are impossible to break. Manea's themes and narrative strategy are intricate: his style fluctuates in correspondence with the instability of his heroes' lives, his history is encased in a elaborate network of allusions and paradoxes. Yet in the midst of the novel's overriding disorientation, the author establishes intersections and uncovers the common. From the predicaments of his perpetual outsiders, he offers a poignant assessment of the issues of the individual in the age of globalization. He creates with unmatched power and a unique sensitivity to the human tragicomedy.
