Romanian literature in translation: "Little Fingers" by Filip Florian

During this year's PEN World Voices Festival in NYC, RCINY organizes a special series of literary events introducing Romanian writer Filip Florian, presenting in NYC his upcoming English edition of the acclaimed debut novel "Little Fingers", to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt  in July 2009. The translation by Alistair Blyth is supported through a grant of the Romanian Cultural Institute's National Book Centre.

Join us at RCINY for a reading from the book and a dialogue with Florian about contemporary Romanian literature, its translation and reception abroad. The dialogue will be moderated by Michael Scammell, professor of writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts, translator of Nabokov, among many others, and former President of PEN American Center and a Vice-President of International PEN. Also present to complement the dialogue, Simona Kessler, founder of the most active Romanian literary agency, and Corina Suteu, RCINY director.


About "Little Fingers"
In a little town in Romania, a mass grave is discovered near the excavations of a Roman fort. Are the dead the victims of a medieval plague or, perhaps, of a Communist firing squad? And why are finger bones disappearing from the pit each night? Petrus, a young archaeologist, decides to do some investigating of his own.

Florian has packed real history, a religious pilgrimage, a criminal investigation, a recipe for roast pigeon, and a love story into two hundred truly remarkable pages.


Quotes from the German and Romanian press
"Filip Florian… does not go in for bizarre scenarios, but rather for the human truth that conceals itself behind lies, shame and suspicion…" - Nicole Henneberg, Frankfurter Rundschau (October 14, 2008)

"With this astonishing novel, rich in points of view and ideas, full of imagination and humour… Florian also broadens the horizon of Romanian literature." - Jan Koneffke, Freitag (October 16, 2008)

"Little Fingers is an exceptional debut, the debut of an already sovereign writer." - Uwe Stolzmann, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (December 16, 2008)

"A strange charm pervades this debut novel, combined with a sensitivity to the aftermath of totalitarian oppression." - Silja Ukena, Der Spiegel (December 29, 2008)

"Little Fingers is story about the past, with an European flavor of nostalgia, irony and the finest humour. For sure the strongest debut novel in the Romanian literature of the past decade." - Tudorel Urian, Romania literara (August 10, 2005)

"Little Fingers is a novel in the literary tradition of the magic realism of Marquez and Llosa. - Catalin Sturza, Ziua (April 4, 2006) 


Filip Florian (b.1968). Between 1990-99, he worked as a journalist and editor for the Cuvintul (The Word) weekly and then as a correspondent for the Free Europe and Deutsche Welle radio stations. He spent five years in the mountain town of Sinaia writing his first novel Little Fingers, which was published to great critical acclaim by Polirom in 2005. Greeted as the work of a distinctive and original new voice, the novel was awarded the Romania literara (Literary Romania) magazine Prize for Debut, the Romanian Writers’ Union Prize for Best Prose Debut, and the National Union of Employers Prize for Excellence. Together with Matei Florian, his younger brother, Filip Florian recently published the unusual dialogic novel The Băiuţ Alley Lads (Polirom, 2006), also warmly praised by critics and the reading public alike. In 2007, second editions of both books were printed. Little Fingers has been published in Hungary (Magvetö, 2008), Germany (Suhrkamp, 2008) and Poland (Czarne, 2008) and will be published in the USA (Harcourt, 2009) and Slovenia (Didakta, 2009). The Băiuţ Alley Lads is also due to be published by Czarne in 2009.