ABSTRACT
Beginning with his childhood memories of the totalitarian horrors of the Nazi concentration camps; followed by his dehumanizing passage through postwar, communist Romania; his eventual escape to and transplantation in the United States; and ending in his final reception and welcome in the American academy (Bard College, New York), Manea’s essay explores, at length and in considerable detail, the torturous search by the uprooted individual for a new and stable second home. In so doing, Manea concludes that not even in the creative work of writing or art can the exile find permanent stasis and solidity.
