Publisher's Synopsis
The novel RUN, ANGEL, YOUR HOUSE IS BURNING represents radiography of the Romanian society after the coup d'état in 1989, a society loaded with defects and abominable customs, with steeled mentality: 'The other one', the neighbor is good, but he is good at being eaten. The protagonist proposes a toast to a cocktail party, which doesn't deny this principle, 'The literary critic is a sheepfold dog delighted at his own barking and not at the bleating of the victimized sheep.' This novel is of admirable subversive force, is a thrilling, spiritual, ingenious and interesting one. The plot of the novel is somehow unusual, with Balkan specific features, a merry-go-round of love and murders committed while smiling. The protagonist (Geg) has serious social and moral problems. He is a member of Securitate secret police, a notorious informer who becomes literary columnist at a central newspaper and lecturer at the University by swindling. After the coup in 1989 he loses his lukewarm jobs, his wife Margareta also becomes unemployed. The poverty drives her into doing business with merchandise from Turkey where she makes a few journeys. Relying on rumors, her husband suspects her of unfaithfulness. Shortly after he finds her friend, too, who is a gangster who helps her extricate herself from a difficulty in Istanbul, he takes her merchandise to sell it in his consign shop from Bucharest. The gangster wants to better know the happy family, and asks them to an outdoor fete, to a tourist's place. Over there the mobster sets up a trap for the protagonist - his child goes missing and insinuating that his wife Margareta, too, does another kind of business at Istanbul, he suggests a bargain to him - he should sell her to him, and should sexually, dreadfully exploit her. Margareta undergoes Calvary, being on drugs she is sequestered and sold, becoming pregnant she is transported to Greece where she gives birth to a child and the baby is sold again and she is forced into suckling all kinds of perverts. By chance she is saved by an Italian doctor who's been brought to her to render service to him. He takes her to Italy where after a while they get married. The protagonist doesn't stand idle either, the gangster hires him to transport mysterious merchandise, he has a verbal fight to regain his university job, he tries to sign in at a political party, tries small chewing gum business with money borrowed from the gangster, tries to sell children for adoption, tries a new love affair, all attempts lamentably fail. He realized that he didn't renegotiate the agreement with the state. He kills the gangster who has threatened his house and in a game of suicide he dies holding his wife Margareta in his arms. The plot of the novel is concerned with the disclosure of protagonist's consciousness, with his relationship with other women and with family quarrels, with his going round to different milieux of the society, sometimes he floats as if above the steam of Hades. The depicted emotions are jealousy, anger, pain, sensuality and the others. The affective life of the women is often depicted vividly and subtly. The novel is interwoven with protagonists' retrospection; the consciousness is reflected into the opinions of those around, into private or public confessions or into more versions. The narrative voice is true, supported by ironical tone. The novel is built as ingeniously as a symphonic poem. The text contains a multitude of depictions, of rivalries, of suspicions and of affective games. The dialogues are natural, and have certain alchemy of language.
