* writer, novelist *
Author of 12 novels and over 100 stories
Romanian Novelist
https://www.facebook.com/rustido
https://adevarul.ro/blogs/doina.rusti
“The past: dead, but demanding.”
(Four Men Plus Aurelius)
BIO
short bio
DOINA RUȘTI is a Romanian Writer renowned for her originality and epic creativity. She is the author behind the Phanariot trilogy, which includes the novels Homeric (2019), [The Book of Perilous Dishes] (2017) and the The Phanariot Manuscript (2015), but also other bestsellers like The Ghost in the Mill(2008), Lizoanca, Zogru (2006) and many others. Her most recent novel is Occult Beds.
Translated into many languages, including Chinese, her writings have been honored by exegeses and laudatory reviews in numerous international publications. Among others, she received the Writers' Union of Romania’s Prose Award/2008 and the Romanian Academy's “Ion Creangă” Award/2009.
Doina Ruști coordinates the Contemporary Prose Library collection, at Litera Publishing House, teaches creative writing at the University of Bucharest.
long bio
DOINA RUȘTI’s (February 15th, 1957) ancestors are from Montenegro, they are Turks, Jews and especially Danubian Romanians, and her writings are outlined by a highlighted Balkanism and a mythical realm of various sources. She spent her childhood in a village in southern Romania (Comoșteni), raised by a family of teachers, who made great efforts to survive in a communist world. The absurd rules and chaos reigning at the end of the dictatorship are stressed in The Ghost in the Mill, a novel that depicts a fantastic universe, ruled by ghosts and hierophanies. The novel earned her the Writers' Union of Romania’s Award, and it was deemed "one of the most convincing and expressive works of fiction about domestic communism published in the last decade". (Paul Cernat).
Translated into German, it was acclaimed in the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung: "Doina Ruști's book displays a wide range of literary skills, which will surely prevail in the Romanian history of the twentieth century."
In J. A. Weinstock's Encyclopedia, the style of the novel The Ghost in the Mill is classified as neo-Gothic.
Other novels are written in the same fantasy vein. Zogru (translated into Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Bulgarian) brings forward an unusual character and a fantasy style akin to the one portrayed in Chagall's paintings, as noted in a daily newspaper from Santiago de Chile: “Full of humor in some scenes, tragic and fierce in others, marvelous and bright at times, like a Chagall painting, this wonderful story is governed by the terrible loneliness that encapsulates the human spirit in the absence of love.” (Pedro Gandolfo, El Mercurio)
The novel received the Writers' Union Award, alongside a scholarship from the Hungarian government and enthusiastic reviews, including in Italy.
The same style is used in novels such as The Little Red Man (2004), Homeric (2019) and Occult Beds (2021), but especially in The Book of Perilous Dishes. The latter, probably her most translated novel, was awarded the Prize for the best translated book by the Hungarian Writers’ Union (Budapest, 2017), and it was acclaimed for its fantastic narrative and style:
The Book of Perilous Dishes – a stylistic delight, essential literature, similar to Süskind’s Perfume up to a point and then to Evgheni Vodolazkin’s Laurus from that point forward. (Dan C. Mihailescu).
The Phanariot Manuscript (2015), partially translated into English, distinguishes itself by bringing into play a type of magical, fabulous and lyrical realism.
Other novels draw on raw realism. Among them, Lizoanca at the age of eleven, which has been highly praised by both the national and foreign press, was granted the Ion Creangă Award by the Romanian Academy in 2009. The novel was often admired for both its literary value (La Opinion – Murcia, La Jornada, Mexico) and authentic writing:
“Doina Ruști gradually unfolds the story and prolongs pain and terror until they reach unsuspected heights, by bringing their roots to the surface. She succeeded in writing about that dark and even invisible part of society, questioning many of its crucial aspects. Doina Ruști has the rare ability to depict the hypocrisy of man and society at large, the many displays of cruelty disguised as most harmless acts which, at the same time and under the guise of apathy in epic development, wield their ceaseless corrosive power. A pictorial and cinematic writing, achieved in part thanks to the perfect use of comparison.” (Ramón Acín, Turia, 2015).
A Budapest daily newspaper ranks it among the best books translated in 2015, along with Houellebecq's Submission, and Il Libero (Turin) compares it in style to Camus' The Plague.
The Little Red Man was very well received in our country and in Italy, acclaimed for its originality of delivery (La Stampa), complexity of theme (Il Venerdì di Repubblica) and fantasy distinctness (Stato).
„…un mondo allucinato, convulso, assurdo eppure coerente e reale quanto sa esserlo la fantasia, un bizzarro e imprevedibile Paese delle Meraviglie elettronico in cui Laura si avventura incantata e indomita come un’Alice telematica.” (Roberto Merlo –“Ritorno a Babele", Neos Edizioni, 2016, Torino)
Taking an interest in both the fantastic and the realistic realms, Doina Ruști succeeds in writing about the atrocities of the contemporary world just as convincingly as she does about high ideals. Her characters, whether realistic or fantastic, are memorable and outstanding. Her novels are often populated by rapists, murderers, starving people, corrupt and consumed by petty ideals. But with the same skill wielded by the well-versed novelist, Doina Ruști also builds fantastic characters, elves, goblins, ghosts, enchanted tomcats and sorcerers, a craft that prompted some critics to compare her work to that of Bulgakov, Süskind or Marquez. (apud Dan C. Mihailescu, Bojidar Kuncev).
The wide variety of themes, steadfastly moored to present times, as well as Doina Ruști’s distinctive ability to easily switch her narrative style earned her an unquestionable place among the best writers of contemporary Romanian literature. (Nicolae Breban).
Doina Ruști lives in Bucharest, is a screenwriter, and occasionally directs films. She directed a short film, after a story she wrote, Cristian, which premiered at Cannes, 2015, and was also nominated for other international festivals. She also wrote the exchanges between the characters in The Miracle of Tekir (received an award for the Best Swiss Film, Zürich, 2016) and the screenplay for the documentary The Greek Slave (directed by Germain Kanda), nominated for One World Romania’s, 2015.
Starting with 2019, she gave up teaching, currently only creative writing workshops at the University of Bucharest.
She coordinates the Contemporary Prose Library collection, at Litera Publishing House, Bucharest.
Convinced that giving up on the names of her ancestors is one of the great challenges man undertakes, she writes under Ruști.
Her writings have been honored by exegeses and laudatory reviews in numerous daily newspapers and international literary magazines, including El Mercurio (Santiago de Chille), Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Il Manifesto, Las Últimas Noticias, La Jornada (Mexico City), Stato Quotidiano, Turia, La Stampa, La Opinión, Il Libero, Magyar Nemzet, La Repubblica, Beijing Daily and others.
Web page: http://doinarusti.ro
Trans Bianca Zbarcea
Leipzig, 2018
Member of The Writers' Union of Romania
Member of PEN Club Romania
Member of Dacin Sara
Writers & Fiction Makers Association (ACF)
Doina Rusti lives in Bucharest.
"The Ghost in the Mill", to Frankfurt
Read, men, what women have written about you!
I was kind of an explorer. I was expecting to discover amazing things, different from what my family discovered in the books they had read. My father loved poetry. My grandmother was reading contemporary novels, often Romanian ones. My mother was fond of the emotional romance books. And my grandfather’s reading taste was extremely diverse. Besides, he was the only one in the family who was reading even the newspaper. In this context, I secretly started to read Balzac at the age of 14. And not just one, but his entire volumes from our library shelf. The broad phrase and the solid structure of his novels gave me such comfort that I was convinced that I would not read any other writer for the rest of my life. Balzac was my first love or, in other words, that perfume that evaporates whenever one wants to retrieve it.
Goangzhou, Shenzhen (2018), Gavoi (2018), Santiago de Chile (2018), Istanbul (2015), Barcelona (2014), Budapesta (2007, 2014, 2015, 2018), Viena (2008), Plovdiv (2009), Torino (2009, 2011, 2012, 2013), Frankfurt (2009, 2018), Leipzig (2010, 2013, 2018), Moscova (2010), Roma (2011, 2012), Granada (2011), Dusseldorff (2013), Berlin (2013) .
Beijing (2019), Madrid (2019), Goangzhou, Shenzhen (2018), Gavoi (2018), Santiago de Chile (2018), Istanbul (2015), Barcelona (2014), Budapesta (2007, 2014, 2015, 2018), Viena (2008), Plovdiv (2009), Torino (2009, 2011, 2012, 2013), Frankfurt (2009, 2018), Leipzig (2010, 2013, 2018), Moscova (2010), Roma (2011, 2012), Granada (2011), Dusseldorff (2013), Berlin (2013).
2007-2008 Training internship: Story editing, Script editing. Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning (WBL) & Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC). Coord. John Vorhaus.
2000 Ph.D, University from Bucharest
1976-1980 Faculty of Philology, "Al. I. Cuza" University, Iași
1972-1976 Garabet Ibraileanu Highschool (Classical Languages), Iași
When I graduated, I was 23 years old and i looked like a starved Asian. I was coming to Bucharest every month, carrying different manuscripts with me and trying to enter a publishing house. Usually there was someone, a janitor, and I could never get past him. Even now I have many files with short prose, that were very fashionable at the time. "The Ghost in the mill" itself dates back to the same period.
Bucharest University
Member of The Writers' Union of Romania
Member of PEN Club
Dacin Sara
Paturi oculte/Occults Beds
Homeric, Polirom, 2019
Mâța Vinerii/The Book of Perilous Dishes, Polirom, 2017, 2018
translated into German, Hungarian, Spanish
Logodnica/The Fiancée, Polirom, 2017, 2018
The Phanariot Manuscript, novel, Polirom Publishing, 2015, 2016, 2017
excerpts translated into Turkish, French, English, Italian
Mămica la două albăstrele/ The Adultery, Polirom Publishing, 2013
Patru bărbați plus Aurelius/ Four men plus Aurelius, Polirom, 2011
Excerpt in French
Cămașa în carouri și alte 10 întâmplări din București/ The checkered shirt and 10 other episodes from Bucharest, a puzzle, Polirom, 2010
Some stories have been translated into French, English, Spanish, Hungarian, Turkish.
Lizoanca la 11 ani /Lizoanca at the age of eleven/ Th Green Lizard Shadow, Trei, 2009, Polirom: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.
Translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Macedonean.
Fantoma din moară/ The Ghost in the Mill, Polirom, 2008, 2017
Translated into German
Zogru, Polirom, 2006, 2013, 2017, 2018
Translated into Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Spanish/ Santiago de Chille
Omulețul roșu/ The Little Red Man, Ed. Vremea, 2004, 2012
Translated into Italian.
Cong Quanshan Dao Pingyuan, trans Siqi Zhu, De Li Zan, Beijing, 2019
La gata del viernes (Mâța Vinerii), trans Enrique Nogueras, Editura Esdrújula Ediciones, Granada, 2019
Freitagskatze (trad Roland Erb), Klak, Berlin, 2018
Zogru trad. Sebastián Teillier, Descontextos Editore, Santiago de Chile, 2018
Das Phantom in der Mühle , trad. Eva Wemme, Klak Verlag, 2017, Berlin
The Truancy, The Stockholm Review Literature
The Phanariot Manuscript (trans Liana Grama &Andrew Davidson), Trafika Europe, Penn State, University Libraries, nr 8, 2016
The lover (trans Andrew Davidson), Trafika Europe, Penn State, University Libraries, nr 8, 2016
Eliza (Lizoanca) trans. Alexandra Kaitozis, Antolog, 2015, Skopje
Eliza a los once años, Ediciones Traspiés, Granada, 2014 (trans Enrique Nogueras)
Lizoanca tizenegy évesen trans. Szenkovics Enikő Orpheusz Kiadó, Budapest, 2015
Fenerlilere ait elyasmasi eser (Manuscrisul fanariot), frag, trans. Leila Unal, Sözcükler , 58, aprilie, 2015, Istanbul
Zogru, Sétatér Kulturális Egyesület, 2014, prin bursa "Franyó Zoltán", oferită de guvernul maghiar (trans Szenkovics Enikő)
Lizoanca, Horlemann Verlag, Berlin, 2013 (trad Jan Cornelius)
Berlin: Jan Cornelius, Doina Ruști, Georg Aescht, Gabriela Adameșteanu
Lisoanca, Rediviva Edizioni, Milano, 2013 (trad Ingrid Beatrice Coman)
Apartamentul 26, trans. Oana Ursulesku, Koracic, Belgrad, 2013
L’omino rosso, Nikita Editore, Firenze, 2012 (trad Roberto Merlo)
Robero Merlo, Doina Ruști, Marco Dotti, Sabian Trzan
Bill Clinton’s Hand, Bucharest Tales, New Europe Writers, 2011, (coord:A. Fincham, J. G Coon, John a’Beckett)
Kareli gomlek ve Bukreș'teki Bașka On Hadise (Cămașa în carouri și alte 10 întâmplări din București), trans. Cristina Dincer, Kalem Kultur Yaynlari, Istanbul, 2011
I miei ginecologi, in Compagne di viaggio, Sandro Teti Editore, 2011 (trad Anita Bernacchia) (coord Radu Pavel Gheo, Dan Lungu)
Ura pri univerzi, Zgodbe iz Romunije, Sodobnost International, Ljubljiana, 2011.
Zogru (trad. Roberto Merlo), Ed Bonanno, 2010, Roma; Catania
L’omino rosso (trad Roberto Merlo) în Il romanzo romeno contemporaneo, Ed. Bagatto Libri, 2010, Roma.
Roma: Stefano Petrocchi, Mircea Cărtărescu, Doina Ruști, Oana Bocșa Mălin, Horia-Roman Patapievici
Zogru (frag.) și prezentare biobibliografică, în 11 books contemporary romanian prose, Ed. Polirom, 2006, traducere de Alistair Ian Blyth
Zogru (roman), Balkani Publishing House, Sofia, trad: Vasilka Alexova, 2008.
Învingătorul - antologia revistei Nagyvilag (trad. Noémi László), Budapesta , sept/ 2010
Cristian (trad. în fr. Linda Maria Baros), Paris, rev Le Bateau Fantôme , no. 8, 2009, ed. Mathieu Hilfiger
Cristián (trad. Sebastián Teillier), Madrid, rev. El fantasma de la glorieta, nr. 16/2008,
The begining (poem), in Under a Quicksilver Moon, 2002, SUA, Library of Congress,
Dicționar de simboluri din opera lui Mircea Eliade(frag.) în La Jornada Semanal, nr. 455; 456, 2003 (traducere: José Antonio Hernández García)
În curând:
La gata del Viernes. El libro de los manjares perversos, Esdrujula Ediciones, Granada
Director
The Soldier’s Book, documentary, 2018
Umbra perfidă a unei iubiri (The insidious shadow of love), SM, fiction
Ascona Film Festival, 2017
Festival Dona i Cinema – Mujer y Cine – Woman & Film, Spania, 2017
Cinefest, Los Angeles, 2017
GOLDEN BRIDGE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Moscova, 2017
185 de ani de existență a ANR (Homage to the National Archives of Romania), Documentary
Cristian (written&directed by Doina Rusti), SM, fiction, 2015. Selected at Goa Festival; CineFest, Los Angeles; Corner Cannes; Independent Film Festival and Windsor Festival; Christian Film (Award for Best Foreign Film); Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest, 2015,
National Archives (written&directed by Doina Ruști), documentary.
Romanian Litterature (written&directed by Doina Ruști), documentary.
Writer
Nuns witch (directed by Marius Barna), L documentary, docudrama, CNC project financing. in post-production
Sun Dance (directed by Cornel Gheorghita), documentary, L, financed by CNC, 2015
Treasure naive (d. Copel Moscu), documentary, financed by the CNC 2015 post-prod.
Servant Greek (d: Germain Kanda), documentary, docu-drama, Elephant Film, co romanao-Swiss project ORW, 2015
Cream truffles, LM, fiction, Libra Film (Tudor Giurgiu) project funded CNC. Developing.
35 minutes after (directed Cristi Toporan), fiction, Short.
Fraud, directed by Cristian Panaitescu independently , fiction, short. 2014.
Apartment 26, indep. (Directed by Alexandra Băilă), fiction, short.
Dialogues and adaptation
Miracle at Tekir (directed by Ruxandra Zenide), Elephant Film, Zurich
LM, fiction, 2015 (completed) Award best picture Swiss, Zurich, 2015:
Ateneu (literary magazine) Prize for Prose, 2015
The Romanian Academy Ion CREANGĂ Prize, 2011
The Romanian Writers' Union Prize for Best Prose/2008
The Prize of the Bucharest Writers’ Association/2007
Convorbiri literare (literary magazine) Prize for Prose, 2006
Nomination for The Book of the Year Award 2008, 2016
Diploma for supporting National Archives (ANR), 2016
The Golden Medal of "Schitul Darvari", for Literary Activity, 2008
Excellence in Teaching - National Award (2000)
"Full of humor in some sequences, in other tragic and ferocious, sometimes fantastic and luminous, like a Chagall painting, which is predominant in this wonderful story [ "Zogru"] is the figure of the terrible loneliness in which lies the human spirit " (Pedro Gandolfo, El Mercurio, August 19, 2018)
"The Phantom is the narrative catalyst that makes secret forces manifest, especially those of a sexual nature, being also the most visible, single faith, dissolved in the last part of the novel." (Markus Bauer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung )
"In my opinion, the confidence, the artistry of portrayal, the exact and original description of the environment, the quest for a subtle epic crescendo, the illusion of stagnation make Doina Ruști a first class prose writer in current literature." ( Nicolae Breban, when granting the Award of Romanian Academy, 2011)
"Extraordinarias cualidades litterarias." (Antonio J. Hbero, La Opinion, 3 01 2015)
"An ironic and seductive story." (Giuseppe Ortolano - The Friday of the Republic , March 23, 2012, nr 1253)
"Amazing is the fire of a row of stunts of pungent and fulminating expressions that the author devises to describe situations and moods of her protagonist." (Alessandra Iadicicco. La Stampa , no 1815, May 12, 2012)
"Stupefacente è il fuocco di fila di trovate di espressioni pungenti e fulminanti que l'autrice escogita per descrivere situazioni e stati d'animo della sua protagonista." (Alessandra Iadicicco. La Stampa, nr 1815, 12 mai, 2012)
"The talented Romanian writer Doina Rusti, who published Lisoanca, the story of an eleven-year-old who infects an entire village with syphilis and makes victims even among her peers, is making a fool of herself, saving herself as an imaginary creature from another world . The book is also inspired by the great "health" novels, such as The Plague of Camus, where crime takes root more easily in a context of widespread disease. These are certainly the models. " (Gianluca Veneziani, Libero , May 18, 2013)
"Fa il verso ai noir fantastici la brava scrittrice rumena Doina Rusti, che ha dato alle stampe Lisoanca , storia di un’undicenne checontagia con la sua sifilide un intero villaggio, mietendo vittime anchetra le coetanee, salvopoirivelarsi una creatura immaginaria venuta da un altro mondo. Il libro si ispira anche ai grandi romanzi «sanitari», come La peste di Camus, dove il crimine attecchisce più facilmente in un contesto di malattia diffusa. questi sono certamente i modelli." (Gianluca Veneziani, Libero, 18 05, 2013)
"With her shocking book about violence against children, Doina Ruști is making a name for herself with us too. The book gets under your skin and is heavy fare. The sophisticated style contrasts with the brutal plot." (Martina Freier, ekz)
"Even the smallest detail of the novel is veridical" (Magyar Nemzet, December 31, 2015)
"A very admirable story, by the way, very well told. Highly recommended." (Miguel Baquero, The storm in a glass , December 16, 2014)
Mâța Vinerii - a stylistic jubilation, a vital literature, such as Suskind's Perfume to a point, and Evgheni Vodolazkin's Laur, from another point on. (Dan C. Mihăilescu)
The Ghost in the Mill is an imaginative novel, in line with autobiographical fiction, in which magic realism and daily realism intertwine. [...] This mill, which is an axis mundi, the center, the hearth and the obsession of the village, where the character has no clue if he has met the angel or the devil, this mill is the place where a murder occurs, as at the dawn of all worlds: a certain Max, an epileptic, is killed by mistake [...] and everybody is obliged to keep silent, thus becoming accomplices in the murder. We have all been accomplices in what has defined and punished us. This is the parable of communism. A novel with substance, a sinewy prose which, I repeat, equals a part or several parts of Mircea Cărtărescu’s Orbitor”. Dan C. Mihailescu, The man who brings the book, ProTV
"Mit ihrem erschütternden Buch über Gewalt an Kindern macht sie sich auch bei uns einen Namen. Das Buch geht unter die Haut und ist eine schwere Kost. Der anspruchsvolle Stil steht im Gegensatz zu der brutaen Handlung." (Martina Freier, ekz)
"even the smallest detail of the novel is veridical" (Magyar Nemzet, 31 decembrie 2015
"Una historia muy admirable, por cierto, muy bien narrada. Muy recomendable." (Miguel Baquero, La tormenta en un vaso, 16 12. 2014)
My debut book was about Mircea Eliade: a symbol dictionary applied to his work.
It was 1997 and I was walking all over Bucharest, The Ghost in the Mill only a manuscript at that time, trying to convince some editor to publish my book. People craved books – the communist dictatorship had just ended. The publishing houses were translating volumes left and right, launching books just as often, especially non-fiction, confessions, philosophical studies, history, esoteric tomes etc. I had contributed myself to this need of western literature by working at Humanitas. Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco, Gome – these were the best-sellers of the ‘90s. Plus sci-fi books.
One day I entered the Coresi Publishing House, located somewhere in the center of the city. Of course, this time was no different, I didn’t even get a chance to take the Ghost’s manuscript out of my bag. “A Romanian novel?! Nobody’s buying local literature!” the editor barked at me. “If you had anything about Eliade, then yes, I’d publish it immediately. Anything.”
That’s how the Eliade *Dictionary* was born, in record time and written directly on a PC, one that maybe not many people can still recall, a 286. (Yes, you read that correctly: 2). I could have written something simple, I could have blabbed about a random subject, but I realized that only few Romanians actually knew at that time everything that Eliade had written, how his work looked *in integrum*, so I chose to write a dictionary. And we’re talking about Eliade! My novel could wait.
The book was published around the Bookfest of 1997, which at the time was held at the National Theatre. Then people started contacting me. It was selling so well that I had almost forgotten about the pain of not having published The Ghost in the Mill.
Dictionary of Symbols in Mircea Eliade's Work was a book that reached many places around the entire world. A Mexican of whom I have never heard before asked for my permission to translate it and publish it in a daily paper. (https://www.jornada.com.mx/2003/11/23/sem-rusti.html).
The University of Turin was the first that purchased it for its library and thanks to this dictionary I met professors Marco Cugno and Roberto Merlo.
After less than a year, the typographers pirated it. It was sold at Obor, gleaming from the cigarettes stands, but it was really a terrible version, with a red title blinding you from the recycled paper. This 1998 edition is the pirated version. I think it was the most well-spread, as I’ve learned that most people believe this is the year of the princeps edition.
I confess it made me feel good, seeing it so often, especially as I was passing daily by Obor to buy cheap cigarettes.
Others started copying it during the same year. I kept discovering articles signed by fancy people, which consistently included pages from this dictionary. Then my students, the post-graduates, started plagiarizing it. I’ve found it on various sites, compiled, partially or entirely copied. Some even wrote books by elaborating on a few items it comprised.
At some point, somebody photocopied it and uploaded it to SCRIBD . That’s the pirated version, from 1998. I admit, the work of this person impressed me, so I didn’t object, nor did I become upset as they haven’t asked for permission. Either way, it had meanwhile become a book plagiarized to the highest levels, despite the fact that it had been reedited a few times.
For me, this *Dictionary* held a purely literary value, as it represented a way of saying good-bye to Eliade. My first published novel, The Little Red Man, a fiction book of course, had nothing to do with the prose that fascinated me and which brought to a halt the careers of many Romanian writers. And every writer from my generation knows what I mean.
Despite being a novel about the internet, The Little Red Man springs from the fiber of Eliade’s prose, hiding in each of its pages my desire not to write like him.
“I had reached a city. On both sides of the road there were houses, gardens, people walking around. The van stopped and I didn’t give it another thought, I got off and passed by the driver, watching out of the corner of my eye. There was no one in the cabin.”
The Little Red Man
At that time I was considering a sort of deconstructive narrative. We’re talking about a period of minimalism, people were rejecting stories, the classic narratives. That was when I wrote Zogru (2006), a story made of narrative additions, about an immortal spirit, but the essence of this Zogru held an Eliadesque foundation: it is a sort of synthesis, not so much of Romanian fantasy, but of the attitude towards fiction. I rejoiced when a newspaper in Santiago de Chille compared this novel to Chagall’s painting. My character possesses the same naivety I felt when I first met Eliade’s characters.
"It happened after a ten-year break which he had spent submerged at Earth’s core, for whenever he ventured beyond the Danube, he was thrown into a pocket of the world, a place where he would always wake up like after a good night's sleep, cradled by the familiar prattle of the gloles. The return to life was like a rebirth: he felt strong and able to make plans. Curiously enough, the first thing he did this time was to check on the descendants of Scabby Ionita, whom he had left in Bucharest ten years before. And, of course, they were still there. Iancu Ionașcu had become a scribe, and his children were employed by the Divan or working for the princely chancellery. Among them there was one who reminded him of Scabby and Butcher, but who also has some of Painter's artistic enthusiasm. He was named Gligore and was a clerk at a princely kalem, where he kept records of the taxes that the prince himself, Alexandru Moruzi, had set.”
Zogru
In The Ghost in the Mill(2008), I often returned to Eliade's fantastic prose related to communism, for example, the mystical symbols of the *Nineteen Roses* or the mystical-literal evasions from *On Mântuleasa Street*. But I refrained from touching upon that area. I focused on the duplicitous nature of the communist world, on mental unification. Max's face represents the key to the fantastic construction of this novel:
“And then, his pain, flaring up like lava, rose up to the sky through the white, floating corn, like a ghost. He saw it slip through the cobbled alley up to Sile, which continued to weep by holding on to the fence with both hands. And then, like a floating spirit, it flew off by following the same rhythm as a travelling flake, over the frozen road, around the women standing just as still in the mist of the autumn’s end. From among the fig bushes, you could see his desperate, cornered, helpless soul, turned into a bile balloon, sneezing liquid through the broken glass, through the red walls in the still living womb of the mill, so that he could meet his other, happy, warm side, which has been waiting there for 40 years.”
The Ghost in the Mill
It was only in The checkered shirt (2010) that I had the courage to face him, to return to Eliade's Bucharest, the way I saw it and the way I had already presented it to my thousands of students, infected by my obsession.
“It was a thin and poisonous emanation that grew from the fabric of the shirt, wrapping it in a misty terror. The shirt was soaked in fear, anxiety, and there was a sadness gleaming through its checks.
Lori quickly pulled out the shirt, more to check her intuition, and she immediately felt relieved. However, looking at the creased cloth between her fingers, she seemed to notice that within the crossed lines, on the red, gray and white channels, the streams of horror continued to run freely. She couldn’t help it. She needed to check once again. She put on the shirt again, with slow gestures, and she was immediately overwhelmed by the heavy smoke of depression. They were the thoughts of her cousin, a feeling once experienced, a blatant misery that may have gone up at the last moment from Iulică’s soul or from the trenches of death.”
The checkered shirt
When I wrote The Book of Perilous Dishes (2017), Eliade was nowhere in sight. Nothing now relates to him. And yet, here and there I still let slip a nod to him, as I did in the paragraphs below:
"Lipscani Square was, as usual, packed, but from my little uncle’s gig I got a different view of people, smaller and gentler. Between shops and gardens there were winding streets. I tried each one. None of them was Murta but the watchman had heard of it: ‘It’s somewhere round here, young lady. It can’t be far. Maybe next to Frenchmen’s Street.’
At the mention of Frenchmen, the brocade-laden voice of Dubois came into my mind. Around the Consulate there was a web of streets, numerous and short, with so many shortcuts and little cul-de-sacs that my every attempt seemed in vain.
Not far off was the Dâmbovița. Whichever way I took, sooner or later I would arrive at the edge of the river, facing a crowded bridge. What was I to do? I stopped. A captain of the city guard saw how lost I looked. ‘How can I help you?’ he asked. I blurted out what I was looking for. The house, the street, its red tower, and the cat.
‘You’ve put it down on paper? No?’ said the captain in amazement.
This topped it all! How could I have set out, alone, in search of some houses, relying on the memories of unknown people with a tendency to be forgetful!
‘Have you any idea how quickly these people forget? They don’t even know what they ate yesterday, let alone your houses from… how many years back did you say?’
The man gave a disappointed whistle, then held out a sheet of paper that had been in his pocket for a long time. ‘Very well, look, write here on the carriage window and I’ll deal with it!’
‘I always have something to write with on me,’ I boasted, searching through my pockets for my penholder and inkpot.
It just took a minute to set down word for word everything dictated to me by the man, who already seemed like an uncle to me. It was a short text in which I requested that somebody tell me where my houses were.
‘Who do I address it to?’ I asked, respectfully.
‘To Captain Mârcă! Write this: “To His Excellency Captain Mârcă under the bridge”!’
‘Do you know the captain?’
‘I am the very same!’ he announced joyfully.
The man had something grandiose about him. Clearly he liked being Captain Mârcă. He took the paper, and my careful handwriting was still visible as he went down under the bridge, where only now did I notice there was a sort of hut. Before disappearing into the hovel, the captain scrunched the paper into a ball and threw it into the middle of the river.
So this was Captain Mârcă under the bridge. Whoever had a wish wrote it on a piece of paper. That was the way it went. The waters of the Dâmbovița had probably swallowed up so many letters that they had turned blue from the ink.
The Book of Perilous Dishes
Out of all my books, The Phanariot Manuscript does contain eliadesque tones, although it doesn’t belong to the fantastic register. However, Bucharest evenings, the somnolent time and its illusions do indeed come from there.
Doina Ruști
Trans: Bianca Zbarcea
Dictionary of Symbols in the Work of Mircea Eliade,
Coresi Publishing House, 1997
about
Comme Doina Ruști le précise, dans le conte populaire : « la jeunesse éternelle
symbolise le refus de l’être d’entrer sous la pression de l’histoire et
d\exister entre des limites. Si, dans les mentalités d’autres peuples, l’accès
à l’immortalité est déterminé par des épreuves héroïques et spirituelles, dans
la vision roumaine, il n\y a qu’une voie: le refus de descendre dans le temps
fragmentaire; C’est pour cela que le prince ne veut pas venir au monde pour
vieillir, il rejette l’évolution et la fuite du temps non au profit de la
jeunesse comme état de grâce, mais au profit de l’harmonie du paradis » (Ruști,
D.,2001 : 163).
Rodica Maria Fofiu, Université « Lucian Blaga », Sibiu.
If there is no reward, there is no play. People need reward to come into play.
“If you need to clear the air with these gentlemen, better remove yourself from the car!” Julia’s boyfriend, or whatever he was, didn’t seem like much. I had fought more fearsome men in my life.
When I heard him mentioning my mother, whom he had started bespattering in something resembling the English language, calling her “a Norwegian whore”, I opened the door and headbutted him without the slightest hesitation. I yelled at the top of my lungs too, so that bitch, Julia, could hear me loud and clear: “I’m an Irish man, you fucking asshole, I’m from Belfast, we would stick some Semtex up your ass" trailer
The love is happiness to be only a rotting cloth in the wound of a stranger.
Full of humor in some sequences, in other tragic and ferocious, sometimes fantastic and luminous, like a Chagall painting, which is predominant in this wonderful story [ "Zogru"] is the figure of the terrible loneliness in which lies the human spirit.
Pedro Gandolfo, El Mercurio, August 19, 2018
The Phantom is the narrative catalyst that makes secret forces manifest, especially those of a sexual nature, being also the most visible, single faith, dissolved in the last part of the novel (the novel The Ghost in the Mill).
Markus Bauer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Mâța Vinerii - a stylistic jubilation, a vital literature, such as Suskind's Perfume to a point, and Evgheni Vodolazkin's Laur, from another point on.
Raluca Andreescu, The Ghost of Communism Past The Birth of Post-Communist Gothic Fiction, Zittaw Press, 2011
Dan C Mihăilescu
The novel Eliza a los once años by Doina Ruști has exceptional literary qualities
Doina Ruști convierte su novela en una furiosa causa general contra la depravación de los valores éticos que han de regir cualquer sociedad desarrollada. Mas alla de su enorme valor documental, esta novela releva las extraordinarias cualidades literarias. (Antonio J. Ubero, La Opinión, 3 01, 2015)
Antonio J. Ubero, La Opinion
En esta línea, sorprende la capacidad de Doina Rusti a la hora de entrelazar la historia de Eliza (indagación en su personalidad infantil: valor de los zapatos, de los cruasa- nes...) con la historia de quienes la prostituyen (no olvidar las viejas cos- tumbres y tradiciones que sobre ellos revolotean). También sorprende la capacidad a la hora de reflotar, bajo una pátina amable, la hipocresía per- sonal y social o el tema de la violen- cia, impactante esta desde la primera frase, siempre visible en la novela y en permanente función erosiva.
Ramon Acin, Turia, nr 115, 2015
The great novel like Camus's The Plague.
Gianluca Veneziani, Libero Quotidiano
Lizoanca is a groundbreaking book written in a style refined and nuanced.
Martina Freier
Even the Smallest Detail of the novel is veridical ...
Maiorca, ravishing in her unique beauty, but also a little sorceress, the perfect disciple of her witch mother, Tranca, hipnotizes Leun with her Gypsy magic, while heraling him of his swollen nose, caused by bad berries, warning him of devilish side-effects. Finally, they are having a romantic night, in Bozăria, a place where impossible love and magic turn possible. After their night together, his supreme drive will be that of making her a dress so special that nobody can afford, a dress made of the finest silk, fromMalta. Maiorca is however promised to a Gypsy slave, the property of the boier Doicescu.
Puskás-Bajkó Abina, JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN LITERARY STUDIES, nr 9, 2016
A wonderful story, impeccably written.
Miguel Baquero, La tormenta en a vaso
Doina Rusti is an excellent prose writer, of great talent and intuition;
Norman Manea
As regards the literary value of the novel Lizoanca at the age of eleven, I think it is one of the most outstanding in current literature. The narrative intelligence, the fluidity of action, the invariably astonishing eloquence of the text, the shortness, the characters'pithiness, the accuracy of gestures, highly defining within a scene (approached shortly and directly, no introductions, sometimes hardly drafted auctorial reflections) and the way each short chapter enters into the whole - are hall-marks of a great novelist.
Gelu Ionescu, Apostrof,
In my opinion, the confidence, the artistry of portrayal, the exact and original description of the environment, the quest for a subtle epic crescendo, the illusion of stagnation make Doina Ruști a first class prose writer in current literature.’
Nicolae Breban, when granting the Award of Romanian Academy, 2011
... I do not have much time for reading ... but it was enough to open one and I could not close it until I read it through. The other book struck me down, too. Doina Ruști is an excellent prose writer, of great talent and intuition.
Norman Manea, about Four men plus Aurelius and Lizoanca
The product of a powerful original prose writer, a rara avis in post communist Romanian literature, The Ghost in the Mill is not only a first-rate literary event of the current year, but also one of the most convincingly poignant works of fiction addressing the topic of local communism to be published during the last decade.
Paul Cernat - Revista 22, Bucureștiul cultural
The Ghost in the Mill is an imaginative novel, in line with autobiographical fiction, in which magic realism and daily realism intertwine. [...] This mill, which is an axis mundi, the center, the hearth and the obsession of the village, where the character has no clue if he has met the angel or the devil, this mill is the place where a murder occurs, as at the dawn of all worlds: a certain Max, an epileptic, is killed by mistake [...] and everybody is obliged to keep silent, thus becoming accomplices in the murder. We have all been accomplices in what has defined and punished us. This is the parable of communism. A novel with substance, a sinewy prose which, I repeat, equals a part or several parts of Cărtărescu’s Orbitor”.
Dan C. Mihăilescu, Omul care aduce cartea, ProTV
Doina Ruști has the vocation of a builder constructor, the capacity to build a meaningful narrative and exuberant imagination. If asked to recommend certain characters, pages or sequences from the second part of The Ghost in the Mill, I wouldn’t know which to mention first, because almost all of them are remarkable.
Bianca Burța Cernat - Observator cultural
The Ghost in the Mill is, from my point of view, the best novel published last year.
Șerban Axinte – Observator cultural
The characters drawn by Doina Rusti are incredibly genuine: the author has the rare gift of seeing things both in a synthetical and a contingent way, including detail within the portrait. The core of the novel is the second part: The Mill, being slightly over 200 pages and exceptional. It is this time-space condensed sequence that reveals the great qualities of the author; these are the narrative construction and the capacity to suggest the texture (substance) of a certain humanity.
Mihai Iovanel, Cultura
The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary Cinematic Monsters (Routledge, New York)
„Romanian author Doina Ruști’s novel The Ghost in the Mill (2008) exploits the device of haunting to revisit her nation’s recent history, including the effects of the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, in 1986”
Romanian author Doina Ruști’s novel The Ghost in the Mill (2008), writer Manuel Rivas, The Crpenten’s Pencil (1998) in wich the ghost of an artist executed by Falangist militia haunts a pencil (and its future user).
Jeffry Andrew Weinstock,
Her talent does not necessarily stand for her ability to build phrases, but characters and situations which are not only convincing, but also give you the sentiment of contingency.
The theme of communism suits very well with such a gifted writer, the demoniacal history of the terrible 45 years that Romania has undergone in the isolated space of a village.
Doris Mironescu - Suplimentul de cultură
Doina Rusti joins the elite of our still youthful prose writers with her third novel, both ambitious and masterful. (...)
The whole construction is remarkable: the epic matter, both dense and fluid, typologically diversified and symbolically rearticulated; the varying rhythm, alert or slow, of the narrative; the clever assemblage and great control. And above everything, an obvious artistic maturity.
Daniel Cristea Enache - Timpuri noi, Ed. Cartea Românească, 2009, p. 177
The Ghost in the Mill is, without any doubt, one of the landmarks of Romanian contemporary prose, because of the technical clearness of the writing which simulates innocence, the morbid-exuberant imagination and, last but not least, the convincing manner in which it revisits the totalitarian period, with tender detachment, obsession for details and understanding.
Gabriel Cosoveanu: Ramuri
The novel [Zogru] is filled with an atrocious realism, showing a vision as veridical as possible strictly of contemporary reality, but it escapes in the fantastic in a way as natural as Marquez’s famous Remedios was rising to the sky while she was hanging the laundry to dry." (Horia Garbea in Saptamana financiara Journal, March 27th, 2006).
Horia Garbea, Saptamana financiara Journal
"The fabulous, the miraculous, the supernatural blend with the petty history, in detail, even in the day-to-day life. A substantial and gripping novel, an altogether unwonted presence on the current literary stage.
Daniel Cristea-Enache, România literară Journal
"The protagonist [The Ghost in the mill ] is indeed a scepter, hidden in a ruined mill, a topos of horror, but an obsessive attraction for people of Comosteni-village. In several hundred pages, the novel exposes the story of a family and many individual micro-narrations. The characters are transformed in kafkian style under the influence of totalitarian system, so that the final section, entitled Two days, is a delta for all wild rivers of life with the flavor of burnt rubber.”
Gabriel Coșoveanu, Ramuri
The Ghost of Communism Past The Birth of Post-Communist Gothic Fiction, Zittaw Press, 2011
"Writing The Ghost in the Mill in order to exorcise the haunting spectre of communist times,
Doina Ruști marks an interesting break with the Romanian literary tradition. In tune with
international trends, she follows the pattern of ghost stories to reactivate a dreadful past that would not be stifled or silenced. Through the intrusion of unexplainable spectres in the life of a rural community under dictatorial rule and through the central image of a threatening and luring old mill, Ruști manages to create a Gothic novel born out of a history of fear, secrets, betrayal, guilt and broken ties. In so doing, she moves beyond the magic realism to which many writers resorted in the late communist and early post-communist period in an attempt to escape the levelling pressure of socialist realism and the censorship that came along with it. Although her use of Gothic themes and motifs represents a deviation from both old and new Romanian literary norms, which have never really accommodated the genre, the negotiation of the collective past with the tools provided by the Gothic ultimately proved successful, bringing the author high critical acclaim and international recognition. Ruști capitalizes on the genre’s interest in individual trauma and unrest, in the shattered autonomy of the individual, in the loss of coherence, wholeness and in fragmented consciousnesses, in failed relationships, oppression and suffocating anxiety. She deftly adapts the seemingly unlikely Gothic toolbox to Romanian social realities before December 1989, making the most of the genre’s tried and tested disquieting, disruptive potential"
Raluca Andreescu
Doina Ruști is the same prose writer of driving force, of a misleading volubility able to drag out ambiguous effects from the most low-pitched prosaism.’ (Gabriel Coșoveanu, România literară, 8 iulie, 2011)
Gabriel Coșoveanu
In her novels, Doina Rusti creates scenarios and psychologies that unreel like the windows of a hypertext.’ .
Roberto Merlo
Doina Ruști is a writer who always breaks out from reality restraint, in order to flow, like Aladin, on the enchanted carpet of imagination. Her prose provides all reasons to get confused, and a superficial reader stands the risk to remain prisoner or disenchanted at the sensational level of the topic. This seems to be the case with the recent novel, For men plus Aurelius (Polirom Publishing House, Iași, 2011), a story with literary fast-food ingredients: into a thriller, characters with no psychological depth, an alert simplicity of the narration.
Gabriela Gheorghișor, Luceafarul
Lizoanca at the age of eleven (Lizoanca la 11 ani)
The Ghost in the Mill (Fantoma din moară)
Zogru
The Phanariot Manuscript (Manuscrisul fanariot)
The Phanariot Manuscript (Manuscrisul fanariot)
The Ghost in the Mill (Fantoma din moară)
The Little Red Man (Omulețul roșu)
The Little Red Man (Omulețul roșu)
DOINA RUȘTI is a Romanian Writer renowned for her originality and epic creativity. She is the author behind the Phanariot trilogy, which includes the novels Homeric (2019), [The Book of Perilous Dishes] (2017) and the The Phanariot Manuscript (2015), but also other bestsellers like The Ghost in the Mill(2008), Lizoanca, Zogru (2006) and many others. Her most recent novel is Occult Beds.
Translated into many languages, including Chinese, her writings have been honored by exegeses and laudatory reviews in numerous international publications. Among others, she received the Writers' Union of Romania’s Prose Award/2008 and the Romanian Academy's “Ion Creangă” Award/2009.
Doina Ruști coordinates the Contemporary Prose Library collection, at Litera Publishing House, she is a screenwriter and teaches creative writing at the University of Bucharest.
