When I turned 45, my daughter, Daria, gave me the book “The Hooligan’s Return” as a birthday present in Brussels, just a few days after the French translation was published. That’s how I discovered Norman Manea and became his friend without him knowing.
Norman Manea lived through the horrors of Nazism and Communism, survived the Holocaust and the concentration camp to which he was deported as a child, and knew the dramatic experience of exile. In fact, the theme of exile is a “red thread” in his writings, an obsession that makes him consider himself an exiled man no matter where he lives. Perhaps that is why his books gather between the pages the sensitivity and fragility of soul that marked his childhood, but also a lot of hope. Through his way of writing and being, Norman Manea embodies the profound humanity with which we are all born, but which, as the years pass, some people forget in the drawer of memories, caught up in the whirlwind of a world too busy with the servitudes of reality often marked by hypocrisy and mercantilism.
In an interview given last year (culturaladuba.ro, August 25, 2025), Norman Manea confessed: “I now live in a country that mixes the entire universe, but, for me, Romania has been and is a constant presence, as it is in my identity documents and in my books.” The emotional connection with the places of origin is a common trait of most Romanians I have met abroad. Living, by the nature of my profession, for many years far from the country, I often had the revelation of the indestructible bond with my native land. I remember that, in September 1994, while I was in New York to participate in the UN General Assembly session, one day I climbed onto the terrace of the Twin Towers roof. In front of me were the Hudson River estuary, the Statue of Liberty and the immensity of the ocean, I saw helicopters flying halfway up the building and you could feel like the master of the world. But I was thinking that across the Atlantic is Europe, that in Europe is Romania – and I felt my heart begin to warm up, and when I told myself that somewhere in Romania is my city, Câmpulung, my heart was about to jump out of my chest. That’s when I realized that distance makes you incredibly close to home. In Norman Manea, this feeling takes on the dimension and depth of literary creation with universal value. The permanent search for roots – lost, found and always questioned in order to re-examine the connection with them – makes the writer Norman Manea an ambassador of the eternal human and of the eternal Romania, alike.
I had the chance to meet him in person in 2011 and 2012 in London, where he had been invited by the Royal Society of Literature. We met again in New York, and the personal chemistry that I noticed from the beginning – marked by my admiration for the man and the writer – turned into a discreet and deep friendship, in which what matters is not the frequency of contacts, but the joy of seeing each other again. Together with my wife Dana, I had the privilege of being with Norman and Cella Manea at literary events, or in the homes of mutual Romanian-American friends. They then invited us to their small apartment on the West Side, not far from Central Park in Manhattan, New York, but also to the chic residence allocated to the writer on the campus of Bard College, where Norman taught until a few years ago, and where he is Professor Emeritus for life.
About Cella Manea – herself with a remarkable career in the field of book conservation and restoration in Romania and, later, in the United States – Norman says that “she was and remained a gift of fate” for him. Cella edited and compiled works related to her husband’s life and writings, including the biographical chronology in the volume “The Obsession of Uncertainty: In Honorem Norman Manea”, a work published on the 75th anniversary of the most translated Romanian writer, to which 50 personalities of the contemporary world of culture contributed.
The ideas in Norman Manea’s pages express, I believe, also the “obsession of uncertainty” of those generations whose destiny intersected with two antagonistic ideologies – communism and capitalism, two diametrically opposed political regimes – dictatorship and democracy, and two worlds separated for four decades by the irony of history – Europe beyond the Iron Curtain and the West. These generations understand, perhaps, best the value of freedom earned, not guaranteed by birth, a freedom that wants, therefore, to be defended and cared for every day. And ideas are perennial vectors of this freedom because, as American President John F. Kennedy once said: “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death”.
Norman Manea is today one of the most important contemporary writers. In the last 20 years he has been repeatedly proposed by literary and academic figures from France, Italy, Romania, Sweden and the United States, on the list of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics have compared him to Franz Kafka and James Joyce, and the most recent official biographical sources indicate that his work has been translated into over 30 languages, disseminating to the world the humanist message of a Romanian writer respected both for the value of his writings, and for his high moral conscience.
He is a member of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain and the Berlin Academy of Art. Along with many international distinctions and recognitions, he received the highest Romanian decoration – the “National Order of the Star of Romania” in the rank of Grand Officer – “in recognition of his active promotion of Romanian culture and values, for the high moral conduct he has demonstrated throughout his career”.
Norman Manea lived through fundamental experiences of the last century – from the trauma of deportation, the tragedy of the Holocaust, two dictatorships, and exile, to reaching the heights of professional success and recognition as a moral benchmark – all this in one life. Eleanor Roosevelt is credited with the aphorism: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift” – an exhortation to appreciate the present and the people whose valuable imprint transcends borders and time, and with whom we have the chance to be contemporaries. On July 19, 2026, Norman Manea turns 90. By honoring him, we honor the universality of his work and of Romanian literature. Happy Birthday, Norman Manea!
Strasbourg, July 2026
Dr. Ion I. Jinga
Note: The opinions expressed in this article do not bind the official position of the author.
