The Encounter

"Romanian Gabriela Adamesteanu’s daring, allusive novel reads as a series of dreams merged with vivid memories. At its centre is Prof Traian Manu, an academic who left his native country many years earlier, before the door of communism slammed shut. . . . Alistair Ian Blyth’s symphonic translation conveys the various tone shifts of the several narrative viewpoints engaged with piecing together the story as the novel balances the melancholic with the farcical. . . . Adamesteanu’s kindly wanderer, an academic, not a warrior, is no less heroic for being one and is also sympathetic. The mirrors may be shrouded, yet the various reflections of lives and experiences are there to be seen, catching the light as so many truths slowly emerge from fragments of memory and half-remembered, never-forgotten facts." (The Irish Times)