Ron's rages are sincere and — according to his wife — healthily cathartic. But can these splenetic outbursts loosen the grip of capitalism at its most monstrous?
Red Hands by Colin Sargent
Love, loss and rueful laughter in Ceauscescu-era Romania
Iordana Ceauscescu
[Barbican Press]
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HAZ de necaz. The term – Romanian for rueful laughter – fittingly appears a number of times in this novel. It pretty much describes Red Hands’ tone – tragedy hardened further by comedy.
After his extraordinary second novel The Boston Castrato, Colin Sargent shifts his intelligent and sharp focus from the US of the 1920s to the Romania of the 1960s onwards.
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