Description

Bogdan Coșa’s novel follows a rural family. They live with doubt, drink, and few chances to get ahead. The young people in the family dream of leaving. Their lives show how fragile people can be without a secure place in the world.

This is social fiction about family life and what shapes it. Coșa explores how capitalism shapes lives in a world he has known. His first three novels focused on the self. Here, he takes a wider view but treats his characters with care. Fog and damp woods make the rural setting feel almost unreal. In one scene, Petru watches his grandmother. He recalls the daily tasks of another grandmother.

Coșa was born in Codlea in 1989. He studied literature at Transilvania University in Brașov. He also studied at the University of Bucharest. From 2011 to 2017, he published his first trilogy and a poetry collection. He has won grants for his writing and literary awards. This novel won the Observator Cultural prize for prose for 2021.