Cartea numerilor di Florina Ilis

Abstract

Like her previous books, Florina Ilis’ latest novel, Cartea numerilor [The Book of Numbers], is a book-flow, a total-book, due to its dimensions, where the narrative becomes epic and where the author paints broad frescoes of Romanian history, culture, and society in which fiction and reality coexist harmoniously or are combined to elevate rather than confuse. Here, Florina Ilis “plays at home”. The narrated events are set against the backdrop of the author’s native Transylvania over a period of time that spans from the First World War to the present day, passing through the years of the communist dictatorship. On the one hand, everything revolves around the events of a village commemorating its 500th anniversary since the first attestation and, on the other, around a family saga, together creating a complex puzzle of collective memory within the larger historical framework that connects tragedies and dictatorship-era atrocities.