To be published: Q3 2025
Alexandru Popescu’s debut novel Montana, published before the outbreak of the Russian war in Ukraine, reflects the existential path of a Transnistrian child towards a free world, conditioned by the political reality of the region. The book is a direct lens fresco of social life in Transnistria between two worlds that give birth to particular destinies, bearing all the imprints of this experience and all the signs of damnation that the central character tried to overcome, rising above the void.
The Russian-Soviet world that Ion Josan went through as a child, together with the war, poverty, a shattered identity, with poor access to education, decency, an anti-Romanian rhetoric, etc. and the European world that the latter embraces, already as a journalist in Great Britain, settles at a distance measured in traumas and defeats that perpetuate and become unbearable. Presently he suffers from epilepsy which makes it almost impossible to function professionally and even as a normal human being. It becomes nearly impossible to live a decent and fulfilling life. It’s a book about the metamorphosis of normality, its mutilation, a book about the force of spirit on its way to salvation through values, memory and love.