The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution

Rating:
Summary: The Hole in the Flag--Trevor Landers
Review: It was about 2.25 am in the morning when I finished Codresacu's riveting memoir The Hole in the Flag which I found poignant, fey, hopeful and insightful. Sometimes I read a book which demands that it be devoured voraciously and this book falls into that category.

For me, the Romanian revolution is still a cause of some mystification, but it is clear that it was more orchestration than spontaneous uprising. The current controversy with Mircea Dinescu and the debate over the availability of Securitate files, many of which have been pilfered and doctored no doubt. I found my discussions with locals in 2001interesting but wondered whether the divisiveness was a smoke screen yet again. Codrescu's is a reflective and analytical look at Romania just after the Revolution, and his own struggle to comprehend and make sense of the maelstrom that followed is one of the strengths of the work. At turns, banal, burlesque, and brilliant the book is skilfully written and will appeal as much to the general reader as it does to the Romanianists. I heartily recommend this book.