Sebastian-Mihail Ivanescu Books

Mona, stranded in a rural town after being ejected from a train for lack of a ticket, faces a night of uncertainty with no money or accommodation. Her luck changes when Marin, a local schoolteacher, offers her shelter in his home while he is away. This unexpected kindness sets the stage for potential connections and new beginnings in an unfamiliar place.

Originally published in Romanian in 1934, this work explores profound themes of existence and spirituality through a rich narrative. The English edition, released by Penguin Books in 2016, brings this classic to a wider audience, allowing readers to engage with its philosophical insights and cultural reflections. The book's historical context adds depth to its exploration of humanity's eternal questions.

'Nothing I have read is more affecting than Mihail Sebastian's magnificent, haunting 1934 novel, For Two Thousand Years' - Philippe Sands, Guardian Books of the Year A prescient interwar masterpiece, available in English for the first time 'Absolutely, definitively alone', a young Jewish student in Romania tries to make sense of a world that has decided he doesn't belong. Spending his days walking the streets and his nights drinking and gambling, meeting revolutionaries, zealots, lovers and libertines, he adjusts his eyes to the darkness that falls over Europe, and threatens to destroy him. Mihail Sebastian's 1934 novel was written amid the anti-Semitism which would, by the end of the decade, force him out of his career and turn his friends and colleagues against him. For Two Thousand Years is a lucid, heart-wrenching chronicle of resilience and despair, broken layers of memory and the terrible forces of history.

"A rediscovered classic from the author of For Two Thousand Years, this remarkable debut novel presents nuanced snapshots of love in the early twentieth century. Stefan Valeriu, a young man from Romania who has just completed his medical studies in Paris, spends his vacation in the Alps, where he quickly becomes entangled with three different women. We follow Stefan after his return to Paris as he reflects on the women in his life, at times playing the lover, and at others observing shrewdly from the periphery. Women's four interlinked stories offer moving portraits of romantic relationships in all their complexity, from unrequited loves and passionate affairs to tepid marriages of convenience. In the same strikingly eloquent style that would characterize his later, more political writings, Mihail Sebastian explores profound feelings of longing, otherness, empathy, and regret"-- Provided by publisher