English translation available: Liliana Corobca’s KINDERLAND
It is now or never: Steven Stories Press just published their translation of Moldovan Liliana Corobca’s novel KINDERLAND and if you haven’t read it yet please do so NOW!
Corobca tells the story of a girl in a Moldavian village whose parents are forced to go abroad to earn a living. With colourful imagery and pulling no punches, Liliana Corobca describes the harsh reality of Cristina’s life, granting a dignified voice to the children left behind on Europe’s last horizon—thrown on the mercy of relatives or having to fend for themselves.
- rights sold to UK/USA (Seven Stories Press), Serbia (Arete), Italy (Cisla di Elena di Lernia), Slovenia (Modrijan)
- complete English translation available
- by the author of THE CENSOR’S NOTEBOOK (Seven Stories Press 2022), winner of the prestigious Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2023
- wonderful press:
“In this dark fairy tale, livestock and prowling strays coexist with absent adults, rituals, and the wisdom of children. Yet Cristina’s energetic anecdotes evade bleakness, forming a captivating vision of a rural outpost in modern Moldova. Here, survival depends on cleareyed practicality. Amid such trials, the narrow bridge between childhood and adolescence still affords momentary pleasures for which Cristina can be grateful. Kinderland is a literary novel about growing up amid economic decline; in it, a savvy girl lives according to her love for her family.” – Foreword Reviews
“A disturbing portrait of social chaos leavened with charm and hope.” Kirkus Reviews
„Shatteringly beautiful. It is a touching testimony to self-assertion. Cristina is a Moldovan Pippi Longstocking. In her world, however, being alone is no fun.“ Carsten Hueck, Deutschlandradio Kultur
„Corobca’s novel not only tells of the pain and patience of abandoned children with tenderness and humor, it also traces the economic, social and moral decay of the rural milieu with wide-awake realism.“ Andreas Breitenstein, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
„Liliana Corobca has not only created an impressive heroine, but also a moving and touching contemporary document. A contemporary document about the lives of children in today’s Europe that creates unrest in the reader’s heart and raises many questions.“ Mirko Schwanitz, Kulturradio RBB
„Liliana Corobca succeeds in capturing the cosmic loneliness of these children in words with her persistent eye for detail, which almost reaches the emotional pain threshold.“ Dirk Schümer, Die Welt
„The narrator’s tone, half naive and half precocious, half shocked and half unapologetically harsh, is exactly what you would expect from a prematurely mature twelve-year-old. … Corobca’s everyday, dry realism, the highlight of which is the vivid imagery, matches this.“ Hans-Peter Kunisch, Zeit Online
„In emotional and artistic language, Corobca tells a moving story of everyday life as a child in a broken adult world, of indignation, longing, tenderness and anger.“ Carsten Hueck, WDR5
„An unsentimental but tender, wonderful book from our European neighborhood.“ Cornelia Zetzsche, BR Diwan