Romanian journalist and writer Liviu G. Stan has won an award for his latest novel, Salamanders.
He was named the most creative fiction writer in the FICTION awards which were announced at a gala in Constanta on Wednesday.
Vivid imagination
Known for his vivid imigination and sharp prose, Mr Stan delights his readers by conveying a sense of the fantastic both in fiction as well as in everyday situations.
Prize-winning Salamanders, which was published in 2021 during the pandemic, is a novel about organ traffickers, a space ship and a social experiment in Cotroceni, a genteel quarter of the Romanian capital.
The novel features four main characters including a woman who “loses her mind in the longest night of her life” and it is based on four strange happenings .
Gog
Writer and university professor Mihai Ene said the novel was like a contemporary version of Gog, a 1931 satirical novel by the Italian writer Giovanni Papini.
“The characters …. develop mindsets which become pathological, from the brilliant but brutal surgeon to the urbanist who participates in the reconstruction of a fantastic Cotroceni fantastist,” he wrote.
Salamanders is Mr Stan’s fourth work in a literary career which debuted with the novel “Bird Blood on Clothes”, (2014), followed by “Houses Will Forget” (2016) and “Filip Manakis: A European Story” (2019).
Foreign affairs
The 35-year-old journalist from Braila in eastern Romania, who worked as an editor at Universul.net until March, has had 13 years of experience in the media, mainly covering foreign affairs, including Ukraine, Russia, Syria, China, Iran and Brexit.
Before he joined Universul.net in 2019, he worked for worked for Digi24, Mediafax, Global Reporter and Adevărul.
He has also contributed to the Cultural Observatory, Horizon, Culture, Tiuk, Europe, Time and Romanian Life.
He currently works for the Romanian public television station, TVR.
Burnt wires
Here is an example of his writing, a text he composed on his way to Constanta to collect his prize, which has been translated into English by Universul.net.
“A smell of burnt electrical wires wafts through the air conditioning filter.
– Why does it smell like this? a lady asks the ticket inspector, heart in her mouth.
“Hmm, it’s a malfunction… The train has a direct brake, but you don’t have to be scared.”
Is “direct brake” the equivalent of “the meteor shower that destroyed an engine” in Sci-Fi movies? I wonder to myself, before asking him out loud.
– Ok, we won’t be afraid of the ‘direct brake’ but what about you?
The controller quickly puts me in my place, almost as if he’s quoting as if from Sun Tzu:
– Wouldn’t I be as white as a sheet if I had a carrot up my arse?
Sun Tzu
Here’s the original Romanian.
Horatiu Malaele
The three-member jury was made up of writer Doina Ruști, Adriana Irimescu, an actress and film producer Andrei Boncea.
The FICTION awards were nominated by the Association for Fiction Creators in conjunction with the “EIGHT reasons” magazine.
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