A novel of time suspended, in whose almost musical phrasing nostalgia is interwoven with longing for love and fulfillment. A portrait of a lost young generation confused and oppressed by a bleak, closed society, yet searching for a more human, luminous shore. Above all, it is a story of the thoughts that might have been spoken, of the things that might have been done.

 

“More than three decades after its first edition, Atrium demands of the reader the same deep understanding of the contortions of outraged intimacy whose reconstruction is essayed by writing. The private world of the ‘I,’ the traumatized identities are recreated in the mirrors of the self, with and for the Other – the premise of Norman Manea’s writing.” (Simona SORA)