Recently translated into Spanish, the novel Zogru by Doina Ruști was warmly received in Chile and officially launched at Casa Pablo Neruda. Speakers at the event included Sebastián Teillier Arredondo, professor at the Universidad Central de Chile and the book’s translator, as well as the writer Leonardo Sanhueza, who also published a review in the Chilean daily Las Últimas Noticias.
In his review, Sanhueza described Zogru as “a singular adventure novel,” emphasizing that it is at once a re-reading of Romanian history through an imaginary rooted in popular legends and a parable about love, death, and power—conflicts in which the sense of belonging to a territory acquires central importance (Leonardo Sanhueza, Las Últimas Noticias, May 7, 2018).
As its subtitle suggests, this is a singular adventure book, which at the same time offers a revision of Romanian history through an imaginary connected to popular legends, as well as a fable about love and contemporary emotions, set against a framework of death and struggles for power, in which the sense of belonging to a territory takes on a primary value.
First published in 2006 by Polirom, Zogru has been reissued several times and translated into multiple languages. The novel received the Romanian Writers’ Union Prize for Prose.
Further coverage is available via RFI.
