Hotel Europa

Tsepeneag (Vain Art of the Fugue) here follows the mass exodus of Romanians after Ceausescu was overthrown. People wanted to go anywhere and would do anything not to live in Romania anymore. As a result, the novel is populated with characters, both opportunists and victims, involved in a variety of nefarious activities. Among the crowd is Ion, the everyman protagonist making his way toward Paris, who grows to feel contempt for the consumer society to which he was once drawn. Aside from this exodus, the novel is also about the author struggling with the writing process. Sentences and passages about his domestic life and decisions about his characters and the plot are interwoven with the narrative. Many of the characters assemble at the house in the country as he's finishing the novel, almost like a cast party.