Fleeing Father

When the precocious daughter of a high-ranking Communist official rebels against her patriarchal father and renounces the preordained path of the New Human – the ideal citizen who would embody the qualities needed to fulfill the vision of an utopian Communist system in Romania – she comes to a decisive crossroad. Fleeing Father chronicles the courageous journey of a young woman's struggle for freedom and individuality. Through art and sheer strength of will, she resists the extravagantly cruel dehumanization wrought by the ideology she was made to represent and discovers the hard-won meaning of achieving self-hood – with all of its triumphs and losses. Banciu’s hypnotic style and sparse and unsparing language is eloquent and emotionally penetrating and speaks to all who have at one time or another sought self-discovery, forgiveness, and the hope of healing in the face of all forms of psychological and ideological divisions.

Voices about Carmen-Francesca Banciu and Fleeing Father

"If stylistically Francesca Banciu’s latest novel translated into English Fleeing Father (Vatherflucht) is a much simpler construct than her previous incarnation, Mother’s Day – Song of a Sad Mother, it is written in the same inimitable prose, rendered beautifully by Banciu’s publisher, Catharine Nicely with Elena Mancini as translator."

– Peter O'Neill, cassandravoices.com

Further Information

Author Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Reading Sample

VLB-TIX

Trafika Europe Radio Interview