Der kurze Weg nach Hause

Der kurze Weg nach Hause is a Bildungsroman, as Florescu stated during a reading in the winter of 2012. The novel constructs a spectacular journey towards individuality for Florescu’s characters. Young and addicted to life and excess, Luca and Ovidiu, as protagonists, embark on a journey that takes them from Zürich back to a lost homeland, Romania. The loss they deal with is existential. Friendship, images of a Romania at the end of the communist era, show and tell of the incompleteness of life itself. The young adults struggle with their severed past, one who does not dream of his homeland Italy, and Ovidiu who tries to reconstruct a Romania from the past: Luca decides to see Ovidiu’s homeland and travels towards the East, ending up in Budapest and having an affair with an engaged woman. The tragic end of the relationship (the fiancee sets himself on fire) corresponds to Ovidius arrival to Budapest, to reunite with Luca, after almost a year. They both set off towards Timişoara, Romania, Ovidiu’s hometown. The path they take is a refuge, like the scenes of all the movies they watched as children in Switzerland that ingulf the world of both protagonists: the camera, this time, is set on them.

– by BIZULEANU DANA