Dialogue with Norman Manea

Born in the Bukovina province of Romania, Norman Manea’s life and work were marked by his early years in a concentration camp, his afterlife under communist dictatorship and exile. Since spring 1988 they live in the United States and he is Francis Flournoy Professor of European Studies and Culture and writer in residence at Bard College, New York State. Manea’s books were translated in more than 20 languages and his articles, essays and short prose appeared in many more countries. His most important work is The Hooligan’s Return: A Memoir  (2003, Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

Manea has received many honors among which are the Literary Prize of the Bucharest Writers’ Association (1979, Romania), The International Nonino Prize (2002, Italy), Holtzbrinck Prize of the American Academy in Berlin (2005, Germany), Prix Médicis Étranger (2006, France), The Literary Award of the Fondation du Judaisme Français (2009, France), The Palau i Fabre Prize for Essay (2012, Spain), The Romanian Star (the highest national distinction) and the FIL Literary Prize for Literature in Romance Languages (Mexico), both in 2016.

Robert Boyers is the editor of the quarterly magazine Salmagundi, Director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute and a Professor of English at Skidmore College. He is the author of ten books, the most recent of which is The Fate of Ideas (Columbia University Press, 2015). He writes often for such publications as Harpers, The Nation, The New Republic and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dulce María Zúñiga is translator to Spanish, from French, Italian and Portuguese. She studied at Paul Valéry University (Montpellier, Francia); Zuñiga received her PhD in Romanian Studies —with specialization in Italian— with a thesis about Italo Calvino’s work. Her most recent translation is Italo Calvino’s Marcovaldo, o sea las estaciones en la ciudad (Madrid, Siruela, 2015). She is currently the Dean of Culture Studies at the University of Guadalajara, and she coordinates the Julio Cortazar Latin-American Chair, founded by writers Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez. She also coordinates the Primo Levi Chair and she is the Director of the Civil Association Prize for Literature in Romance Languages.