Catalin Dorian Florescu

The author of this book was born in the Romanian city of Timisoara in 1967. Today, he lives in Zürich, working as a writer and psychologist. In this book, he presents a true epic and, again, the story of a family. Florescu’s family saga about the Obertins covers 300 years in six wide-ranging chapters, going back to the time of the Thirty Years War. (…) The novel loosely links individual fates with historical events and with the history of conquests, dictatorships and political turbulence. One of the attractions for readers is precisely these changing perspectives. Sometimes, attention just focuses on a private detail, while at other times a village takes centre stage. Later, the focus moves to a stretch of countryside which, at its fringes, is influenced by events further afield. He is a born storyteller, this Catalin Dorian Florescu, who, in using a Banat setting, leads us into Herta Müller’s world of the “lowlands”. But unlike Müller, he does not limit himself to using concentrated language. Rather, he pours out a cornucopia of images, stories, characters and scenes. What Florescu presents with narrative furore in his book is a story of violence and betrayal, poverty and melancholy, hunger and thirst.

Beatrice Eichmann-Leutenegger: „Rückkehr aus der Totenwelt“
© Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 3 March 2011