Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Romanian history just got darker
Kill the General
Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Romanian history just got darker
What you need to know before your trail
Stelian Munteanu, lover, killer and Bucharest boy, is a hero who tells us more than we ever imagined about our times. Stelian, a book editor with a sideline in international police work, has to kill a man, a general whose book he’s just published. Will he pull the trigger?
The novel is also a complex and detailed character study of an individual – a roller coaster ride through the transitions which have taken place over the last decades in Romanian history.
“It’s early. The city is sleeping. I cannot pull the trigger. The time is flying. If I don’t make a decision now…I have no guarantee that the general will still be here the following night. I should get this job done and get the hell out of here!”
Travel Guide
Travel BookTrail style and Kill the General in Bucharest
“Kill the General constitutes a bridge between several different phases of recent Romanian history and outlines the differences and continuities between several different generations of Romanians over the last four decades.”
The author says that he wanted to look at how the traumas of life under a dictatorship can change a person. How does a rapidly changing state affect the people living in it?
The novel, the author’s first to be translated into English looks at the details of 20th century history based on the life story of the character Stelian Munteanu. There are many historical events contained in the book such as Nixon’s tour of Bucharest, the street violence which ended the dictatorship. And Chernobyl.
There are mentions and brief visits to Vienna and small towns/ military places around Romania but this novel is firmly set in the Romania of the past and the future.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Kill the General
Destination: Bucharest, Romania Author/guide: Bogdan Hrib Departure Time: 2000s
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