Today's Romania is a democracy from Kafka's books, where rhetoric is mixed with demagogy and vulgar populism. This is the belief of Norman Manea, the writer who emigrated from Romania in 1986. He made the statement in an interview for Le Figaro.

(Methinks Romania is not the only democracy today that is straight out of Kafka's books...)

"Romania is a weird combination of burlesque and Byzantinism. (...) 20 years after the fall of the tiran, we discover, as the dossiers are opened, than many respectable persons were dishonest. We discover that 80% of the priests trusted by people with confessions were Securitate collaborators", the writer says. His book, "The Clowns. The Dictator and the Artist", has been recently translated in French.

According to Le Figaro, Manea is the most translated Romanian writer worldwide. He lived both under the fascist and the communist dictatorships. His work is essential in understanding the Romanian tragedy from the 20th century, according to Bruno Corty, the writer of the article.

Much unlike the extraordinary Romanian folklore, "the politics is a disaster", Manea opinionated. "Imagine that one day after Ceausescu's death, four million PCR [Romanian Communist Party] members became hysteric anti-communists, obsessed and armed with an extraordinary hate. They felt guilty and wanted to prove the entire world that they treasured their freedom."

(Tainted priests working on religious revival and commies turned anti-communists -- two realities ignored by triumphant accounts of the post-communist world.)


_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}