Exiled Shadow

“One of the most eloquent living witnesses of the European 20th century, Norman Manea, at 87, has brought out Exiled Shadow, a contemplative work of fiction . . . [in] a strong, clarion translation into English by Carla Baricz. . . . A fitting summarization of a rich and deeply honorable career.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“Manea has always had a penchant for experimental writing, but he has rarely experimented more boldly, and with more evident delight, than here.”—Costica Bradatan, Times Literary Supplement

“Exiled Shadow belongs among the great, intricate, and uncompromising works of contemporary literature.”—Jan Knoffeke, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)

“An evocative book on the self and its shadow in an era of destruction.”—Oliver Jens Schmitt, Falter (Austria)

“[Translator] Baricz does a tremendous job differentiating the tones across various parts of Manea’s consistently thought-provoking and studiously intellectual latest work. . . . In its best moments, her translation even evokes another great exiled author in Nabokov.”—Cory Oldweiler, Los Angeles Review of Books

“An extended meditation on the experience of exile and an exquisite game of mirrors that reflects the narrator’s present and past lives as well as his literary soulmates. . . . A paean to a life of the mind lived with bodily immediacy.”—Tess Lewis, Arts Fuse

“An accomplished work . . . an approachable read even as there is so much depth to it, in its many layers. . . . Well done and engaging—an impressive and significant chapter in Manea’s considerable body of work.”—M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review

Shortlisted for the 2024 EBRD Literature Prize, sponsored by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development  

“Norman Manea’s inventive and powerful novel casts its bright light on the dark corners of history and experience, and wittily alchemizes tyranny, displacement and our essential human complexity into literature, into art.”—Francine Prose

“A brilliant book, full of wisdom, humor, and intelligence, by a clear, profound voice that seems to convey centuries of experience. A masterpiece.”—Alberto Manguel

“Norman Manea, eminent thinker and writer of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, stands as a major interpreter of the ironies of exile: the loss of birthplace, the loss of language, the loss of the past as it weaves through the nomadry of the future. In conceptually incisive imagery that burns through spirit and flesh, Exiled Shadow is in part a memoir, and a meditation, and a narrative of the history of cities and their ruins and their glories and crimes. It is also a demonstration of the nature of the artist: the man on the flying trapeze as well as the poet, the dreamer as well as the wandering Jew. There is no other novel like it, and there never will be.”—Cynthia Ozick

“This book’s a diary of history, literature, and Norman Manea. His book knows more about my life than I do. Beautifully feigning, his prose suffers from a constant toothache of poetry. Some books save lives and souls.”—Stanley Moss