by Mircea Eliade
Translated by Mac Linscott Ricketts
The Romanian writer Mircea Eliade is best known in the English-speaking world as an influential Historian of Religion, author of such works as The Sacred and the Profane and The Myth of the Eternal Return. However, Eliade’s body of work is much broader, and throughout his life he kept the world of fiction and mysticism very close to his heart. Starting at the age of fourteen, Eliade continuously produced works of fiction alongside his academic work.
This volume consists of six of his best short stories, taken from over a 30-year period, starting in 1959 with A Fourteen-Year-Old Photograph – the tale of a distance healing in which the patient claims miracle while the healer admits artifice – and including perhaps his most famous short story, the time-shifting At the Gypsies, and culminating with In the Shadow of a Lily, the last story Eliade is known to have written. Each of these stories is dense with allusions and interwoven with connections and references drawn from the imagination and vast knowledge of a great man. Who knows what secrets they may conceal? One thing is for sure – they will repay repeated close reading, but will also charm on the first encounter.
ISBN: 9781912545513
“Here we see Eliade at his best, blending his own ideas surrounding the sacred and the profane. . . Much to the credit of Istros Books they have also included short summaries on both Eliade’s life and what is being communicated in his stories. Frequent references to these short summaries will prove invaluable to even the veteran Eliade reader. For the discerning reader, the technical details are incredibly aesthetically satisfying. For the effect of these stories might not be dissimilar from sitting at a hot train station, slowly losing your mind, and wondering if your fellow travellers are even real. But I will cease from interpreting them any further.” Decadent Serpent
PRAISE FOR ELIADE’S DIARY OF A SHORT-SIGHTED ADOLESCENT (Istros, 2016)
Nick Lezard’s choice, The Guardian
‘. . .playful, ludicrous and very good teen journal, in English for the first time’
‘Eliade may be describing the life of a student in a Romanian lycée of almost a century ago, but anyone who has ever been at school, full of ideals but also too shy to speak to the opposite sex, or incapable of revising for an exam until the very last minute, will relate to this. As will anyone who has ever committed their private thoughts to paper, as the true record of their soul and a rebuke to posterity.’
“The power of Diary is that, while not being a novel unique to Romania, it can be read as metonymous of it. . . For all its boyish, slapdash sentiments, this is a refined piece of work.”
Alexander Clapp, Times Literary Supplement
“. . . Istros Books publication of Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent, now the eighth of Eliade’s novels in English, marks a turn of the tide.. . Moncrieff’s translation, which adopts the idiom of the old English grammar school system, lends a vaguely unreal, Harry Potter–like air to the novel, enlivening the intellectual content.”
Bryan Rennie, LA Review of Books
‘Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent is a cleverly contrived work, entirely authentic yet obviously carefully — literarily — fashioned into exactly this story… it’s a fine example of the genre — and more than just a teenage-wallow.’
M.A.Orthofer, The Complete Review
‘It is a young man’s book; alive and defiant complete with schoolboy bravado, competitive friendship and a very human longing to succeed at something. Fresh and devoid of hindsight, it re-opens the classroom door and the days when each of us tried to read more than everyone else.’
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
“The young intelectual is too lazy to study. Instead he decides to write a novel to impress his teachers: the diary is his attempted novel which we observe creating itseld in a skilful game of mirrors. A delight.”
Patricia Duffaud, The Tablet
