Vasile Ernu launches The Last Heretics of the Empire
Allmoldova.com / 18 nov.2009
A new book by Vasile Ernu titled “The Last Heretics of the Empire” was launched in Chisinau on Tuesday by the publishing house Cartier, as part of Ernu’s promotional tour across Romanian cities, via Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports.
Cartier’s Central Bookstore was full to overflowing on the launching night, attracting prominent Moldovan authors as well as ordinary readers.
An epistolary novel, The Last Heretics describes the intercourse of two persons, A.I. from Bucharest and Vasiliy Andreevich from Moscow, who live in different worlds but share so many ideas, and engage in a quest of deciphering secret languages, specific of the time in which they live.
Author Vladimir Besleaga remarked that The Last Heretics is a natural followup to Ernu’s first novel, Born in USSR. “This book resembles a kaleidoscope tube, with one end in Bucharest, where A.I. lives, and the other one in Moscow, where we find Vasiliy Andreevici. Ernu’s characters talk about some totally wacky ideas”, said Besleaga, adding that the book has a great cognitive value and expresses ideas that challenge the reader.
Author Oleg Panfil, a model for one of the characters, says Ernu offered in this book “a perfectly hygienic instrument, like a toothbrush, for example, which can be used to keep our thoughts clean. Because there are a lot of dentists who tell us “bonjour maman”, “proletarians of all lands, unite” or “our mother is Anarchy”.
Vasile Ernu confessed before the attendance the themes used in the book are not new. “The simple problem which I start from is the necessity to touch issues that we don’t like, to speak the truth. We must distinguish between the world we were born to and the reality we live today. And so my characters are in the situation to analyze the reality against the grain”, he said.
“The idea that interests me is that people must start thinking. This is not a recipe book, how to behave in a situation or another. Our obligation and my task is to make people aware of the existing mechanisms and the possible risks”.
At the end of the meeting, Vasile Ernu promised to publish soon a book about Moldova, a special one, which will “cause quite a stir”.
Born in 1971, Vasile Ernu graduated from the Philosophy Department of the Iasi University (1996) and obtained a master’s degree from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (1997). He was the founding editor of the magazine “Philosophy&Stuff” and associate editor of the “Idea arta+societate”. In recent years he has been a contributor to “România libera”, HotNews, “Noua Literatură”, “Suplimentul de Cultură” and “Observator Cultural”.
Vasile Ernu made his debut in 2006 with “Born in USSR”, first published in Romania, and then republished in Russia a year later. For the book, Ernu won the debut award of the Romanian Writer’s Union.
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