Ioan T. Morar
Biography
Ioan T. Morar was born in Seitin, Arad County, on 13 April 1956. In 1981 he came top of his year when he graduated from the Philology Faculty of Timisoara University, where he studied Romanian and French. From 1981 to 1986 he taught Romanian language and literature at the Textiles Industrial Lyceum in Lugoj. In 1987 he became editor of Viata Studenteasca and Amfiteatru magazines. After 1989 he worked for Cuvintul and Alianta Civica magazines. In 1990 91 he was editor in chief of Romanian Television’s “Varieties,” but resigned. He is a founding member of Academia Catavencu magazine. From the autumn of 2004 to 2009 he was a senior editor for the Cotidianul daily. He has made numerous television broadcasts, and since 1996 has been a member of the Divertis comedy team....
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Novel, Fiction LTD series, Polirom, 2016, 480 pages Book presentationIn 1980s Romania, the members of a choral group specialising in church hymns seek to throw off the yoke of unsatisfying religious denominations in an attempt to discover true faith. Originally Baptists, they join the Pentecostal and then the Adventist church, and finally they convert to Judaism. They manage to emigrate to Israel, where each gets by as best he can. But not even here do Jac, Corneliu and Beni, the group’s three leaders and last remaining members, find spiritual peace : Beni embraces a messianic doctrine, becoming a rabbi, while Jac and Corneliu return to Romania in the 1990s, where they lay the foundations of a Judaeo Christian cult, “The Feast of Tents,” convinced of one thing after long years of wandering : “It doesn’t matter whether we wander or not. God will find us wherever we seek Him.” |
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Novel, Fiction Ltd. series, Polirom, 2013, 336 pages Book presentationGeorgian Nicolau is a promising young man: top of his class at the Military Lyceum in Cimpina, admired by his fellow students and highly regarded by his teachers, he ardently desires to forge a career for himself as an officer. This would help him to break away from his past, from the Gypsy colony where he was born and from the squalid hut where his mother and siblings remain. Nobody knows his secret and nor could they even suspect, since Georgian has light skin and blue eyes, and what is more, he has invented a respectable Romanian past for himself. And his dream comes true. Georgian rises through the ranks, he sees action in the conquest of Odessa, and he even becomes a close associate of his idol, Marshal Antonescu. But the past he has striven so hard to conceal catches up with him when his mother and sister are deported to Trans Dniester, along with numerous other Gypsies, at the orders of the marshal. Georgian will have to make a decision, and his life will be altered along with the course of history.
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Novel, "Fiction LTD" series, Polirom, 2005, 256 pages Book presentationIn Lindenfeld, a Swabian village in the Banat region, abandoned for more than two decades, preparations are underway for a “theatrical performance” intended for a single spectator : Klaus Bernath. The latter abandoned the village in his youth, “escaping” to Germany and becoming, in the meantime, a millionaire. Now in his old age, the wealthy Klaus wishes, after all these years, to visit his childhood home. In order to conceal the truth regarding the abandonment of the now deserted village by its former inhabitants, his son and biographer hire a number of actors, screenwriters, scenographers, a director, a group of art students, and a professor of the theory of art, whose “mission” is to restore Lindenfeld to life. Thus begins a true spectacle, in which the people of the village are brought to life by actors, the houses regain their former colours and nature is recreated by man. In this charade, however, relationships develop, the actors sometimes enter their roles too deeply, and the life of the reborn Lindenfeld catches the characters in the web which they themselves have spun. Everything is finalised before the coming of the village’s great son, more or less grandiose plans are hatched, so that, on his arrival in the village, Klaus Bernath finds a community which does indeed live according to its own rules, not one that merely mimics life. However, since what began as a charade can only conclude in the same way, the plans constructed by the occasional inhabitants of the village are thwarted by the unexpected death of the old Swabian on his return from Germany. This novel is simultaneously a parable about an artificial society, but one which nonetheless mechanically adopts the natural rules of a genuine society. |
