Albert's Book

A Book-Poem in Prose

De: Mihaela Manasia

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Editor’s Foreword (excerpts)


Albert’s Book, by Mihaela Manàsia, achieves something rare and moving: it offers not just stories, but a luminous journey through memory, surrealism, education, and human fragility. This book defies easy classification—both prose and poetry, both testimony and dream. It belongs equally to literature and to the metaphysical spaces we too rarely allow ourselves to inhabit.



We publish this volume as part of our Romanian Short Stories Around the World series, highlighting the richness of contemporary Romanian literature in English translation. Albert’s Book transcends borders—linguistic, emotional, and philosophical.



Structured in three parts—Albert’s Book, Intermittences, and Albert’s Book (Continued)—the text explores the inner world of a mother and her gifted, misunderstood son as they navigate the absurdities of the Romanian school system. It is a textured meditation on love, pain, and resistance.



Mihaela Manàsia writes with a sensitivity that recalls Gellu Naum, Paul Éluard, and Emil Cioran. Her influences—Rimbaud, Camus, Gadamer, Castañeda—intertwine with echoes of mysticism and pedagogical critique. At the heart of the book is Mariama, a mother who protects her child through love, language, dreams, and resistance.



Albert is more than a character—he is a figure of initiation. A brilliant child subjected to a system that fails to see him. School becomes a site of silent cruelty. Yet within this darkness, the story opens spaces of transformation. Through shared dreams and signs, Albert and Mariama discover a language beyond punishment and reward.



Children in this book are “children of titan”—not fragile, but spiritually gifted and resistant to normalization. Their sensitivity signals deeper truths about identity and adaptation.



The book is interwoven with visionary figures and dreamlike narratives: prophetic elders, rebellious adolescents, symbols of esoteric knowledge. These elements are essential—they reflect the way memory and trauma, love and rebellion speak in the unconscious.



The central section, Intermittences, is more elliptical and aphoristic, mirroring the instability of inner experience. The final part brings Albert and Mariama to a new stage—not a resolution, but a rhythm of healing, and a glimmer of spiritual ascent.



Translating this work meant balancing meaning and tone. Anamaria Poenaru and I approached the text not just as translators, but as readers attuned to its emotional and philosophical depth.



This book will resonate with readers interested in literary experimentation, educational critique, and spiritual resistance. It is not an easy read, but it is a necessary one. Within its pages live sorrow, irony, lyrical beauty, and truth.



Albert’s Book knows how to cry—and how to dream. It is a mother’s chant, a child’s whisper, and a writer’s invocation. It invites us to rethink love, teaching, memory, and hope.



Vasile Poenaru

Series Editor, Romanian Short Stories Around the World