Captives, the acclaimed writer Norman Manea's first novel, is a fascinating, kaleidoscopic, and imaginative look into postwar Romania. Divided into three sections — narrated in first-, second-, and third-person voices—Captives explores the lives of several defeated characters as they become almost too much to bear under the weight of endless humiliations: loss of identity, trauma of having survived the Second World War, and submission to the totalitarian state.This is a moving account of a country shaken by communism and anti-Semitism and haunted by recent atrocities, from "a distinguished writer whose vision of totalitarianism is close to Kafka's cloudy menace, universal yet internalized" (Richard Eder, The New York Times).

Deported to a concentration camp from 1941 until the end of the war, Norman Manea again left his native Romania in 1986 to escape the Ceausescu regime. He now lives in New York. In this selection of essays, he explores the language and psyche of the exiled writer.Among pieces on the cultural-political landscape of Eastern Europe and on the North America of today, there are astute critiques of fellow Romanian and American writers. Manea answers essential questions on censorship and on linguistic roots. He unravels the relationship of the mother tongue to the difficulties of translation. Above all, he describes what homelessness means for the writer.These essays — many translated here for the first time — are passionate, lucid, and enriching, conveying a profound perspective on our troubled society.