El cuerpo

Bucharest in the mid-sixties. Romania is a gray country, dominated by the Party. But for the young Mircea, who is eight years old, the reality is prodigious and takes the form of an involuntary comedy. Present and past merge: the lustful Vasile, the boy who grew up without a shadow in picturesque 19th-century Bucharest; Maria, the girl with butterfly wings growing on her back; the erratic Herman, a night watchman whose floor hangs a painting containing the entire universe; the borgian cubic rugs woven by Mircea's mother, hiding state secrets; the mystical apparition of the amazing Serpent Man, an incarnation of the wonderful soul of ancient India; Mircea and his missing brother, Victor, each huddled head to toe, like the zodiac sign Pisces; the men statue of a grotesque Amsterdam and ruby-colored skies. Although what stands out above all is a Bucharest that takes the form of a living being in which all cities fit...