My Childhood at the Gate of Unrest

by Paul Goma

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0930523733
• ISBN13: 9780930523732
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Readers International
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Optimism in the face of terror

Paul Goma is considered by many to be Romania's foremost living author, yet only one of his works has been translated into English. Written in 1987 and published in America in 1990, "My Childhood at the Gate of Unrest" is less an autobiographical novel than a fictionalized autobiography. The young boy at the center of this tale shares Goma's name and much of his past--his father was deported to the Soviet labor camps in the early 1940s, his family fled their home in 1944, and Goma himself was arrested in 1952 and again in the 1956 (and imprisoned until 1962), and eventually was exiled to France. Not mentioned in the book is a famous assassination attempt against Goma in Paris during the 1980sYet, in spite of this life of terror, Goma has somehow retained a commendable (and sometimes unsettling) sense of humor. Set in the early 1940s, when Goma is six years to eight years of age, the novel is comprised of recollections prompted by an imaginary visit to the "calidor" (verandah) of his childhood home. Goma interrupts (and corrects) his own reminiscences with the memories provided by conversations with his parents, idealistic schoolteachers who moved to the rural village of Mana in Basarabia, a Moldavian province long disputed by Romania and Russia. Amidst the battles of World War II, the arrest (and presumed death) of his father, and the hardships endured by his "widowed" mother, Goma still manages to indulge in the type of behavior many children experience: visiting friendly neighbors, helping the deputy mayor Old Iacobi with his chores, playing games with other children, even risking flirtations with older (and quite randy) girls.Incredibly, Goma's optimism endures throughout, even as the book closes with his family's flight from the village before the Soviet advance. Seen through the eyes of a child with the wisdom of an adult, this story is a tribute to bravery and defiance in the face of peril and hardship.