On the Transgressive Formula of Exile – Norman Manea in a Dialogue with Hannes Stein

Our paper proposes a new critical approach for one of the spoken-book - Cuvinte din exil/Conversations in Exile - where Norman Manea (re)formulates his choices of literary ideology and rewrites his biography using the means of confessional dialogue instead of literature. With definite correspondences in the author's representative book, the autobiographic novel Întoarcerea huliganului/Return of the Hooligan, Cuvinte din exil/Conversations in Exile works like an implicit mise en abyme, a reconsideration through the filter of two translation works before the Romanian version and of the selection made by journalist Hannes Stein, an interviewer intent on bringing into discussion a series of perception stereotypes on the cursed Jewish question disclosed by the Jewish Romanian writer. On the other hand, the dialogue also reveals a series of Norman Manea's own parti- pris, which, in view of the work's scope and, particularly, of his writings’ international superlative reception, are difficult to explain.