Travestie

Mircea Cartarescu, one of the great contemporary European writers, belongs to the gifted visionaries and wordsmiths of literature. His early masterpiece "Travesty," a coming-of-age and artist novel, tells the story of a young person's search for self. The sensitive, reserved Victor could be a creation of Marcel Proust, as he experiences the world around him in an intoxicating way during the crisis-ridden summer of 1973: the guesthouse in Budila, where he spends the holidays with his classmates, the mysterious park, and the "Valley of Paradise." Yet, this small cosmos becomes populated at night by the ghosts that rise from the catacombs of his consciousness. The bold sexual advance of his classmate "Lulu," who dresses as a woman for the farewell carnival, thrusts him into a crisis that he only overcomes many years later, literally on the last page of "Travesty.".