Land of the Free

 

Set in a village in the Eastern part of Romania, the multi-awarded Terre des affrachis by French-based Romanian author Liliana Lazar is set before and after the fall of Communism, in an ambiance of mystery under state surveillance and post-dictatorship lawlessness.

Although I prefer my good novels magic-free, the way in which the supernatural is added to this story is an intrinsic part of it, not an add-on to make it more hippy and attractive (although I still don´t fancy of how so many authors from Central and Eastern Europe do use this ´magic´ trope to get international recognition; I hope I am terribly wrong).

Situated near a forest, surrounding a lake called Lion´s Den (Fosse aux Lions) - and later on in the story there is also a Daniel -, the village of Slobozia is shocked by a terrible crime committed: a woman is strangled and all the roads take it to the modest house of Luca family. Victor, the eldest teenage son is carrying with him an overwhelming animal-like power stronger than him. He is longing for love and affection from women and when he is refused, he reacts violently. Going into hiding, he is recruited by a local priest to hand copy manuscripts with religious content, forbidden by the communist regime. 20 years after, Victor Luca is still hiding in his house attic, but times had changes and he is striking back, killing random people in the forest that he´s throwing in the lake. Until the end of the novel, which happens at the beginning of the democratic reign in Romania, he is still free, roaming around free, after a short career as a successful writer, afraid of his own criminal emotional outbursts.

Liliana Lazar knitted a story of its own, set in a complex political landscape. As usual, such realms, particularly dictatorships, create equally complex human characters, particularly a constellation of difficult human choices. To betray for saving your skin? Accept of being part of an illegal network for avoiding being delivered to the authorities? There is an ambiguity of the moral values and choices the characters in the story are facing. 

What I´ve found sometimes a bit challenging was the timeline which seems often unfit for the amount of events assigned to the story. Yes, I´ve understood that there is is a time of the magic, but still, you need to create events to make the story realistic. The village of Slobozia looks like a world in itself, lost to the outside world, if not for some major incidents. Its everyday world turns around the religious time, administered by the church, which is forbidden by the communists and inflitrated by representatives of the secret police. Those circumstances alone are rich enough to generate encounters and additional story lines, but the author rather preferred a simple take, which made me think more than once: what if...the story would have been more challenging and less controlled by the author, with its own autonomy?

There is also a slight inadvertence - at least for me - in the story: one of the characters, an aggressive secret police investigator, is called Tarkan, which is a name I bet is not Romanian. 

The world of Terre des affranchis is unusual, marginal yet alert when marginals - like Victor or Daniel, himself a criminal on the loose - are trepassing. Overall, it is a story and liking or not how it is told is a matter of taste after all.

Rating: 3 stars