FEM

The lyrical, feminist novel that exploded onto the Romanian literary scene: a 21st-century Scheherazade recounts her life to a man from whom she is ready to part ways forever.

In this modern classic of global feminist literature, the only novel by one of Romania's most heralded poets, styled as a long letter addressed to the man she is ready to leave, a woman meanders through a cosmic retelling of her life from childhood to adulthood with visionary language and visceral detail. Like a contemporary Scheherazade, she spins captivating tales that create space in the cosmos for the female experience. Through a dreamlike thread of strange images and passing characters from the small incidents of their lives together to the intimate narrative of her relationship to womanhood, her stories invite the reader into a fantastical vision of love, loss, and femininity.