About the Author

One of the most important, productive and original Romanian writers and translators, Nora Iuga was born on 4 January 1931 and published her first collection of poems, It Isn't My Fault (Vina nu e a mea) in 1968. Two years later The Captivity of the Circle (Captivitatea cercului) followed. Soon, however, accused of disseminating "morbid eroticism" that would have a dangerous influence on the younger generation, Iuga was banned by the communist censors from publishing fiction and poetry; her books were also withdrawn from public libraries and bookstores. This interdiction lasted until 1978, a forced eight-year hiatus that almost ended an important literary career which has now flourished for nearly five decades. Since then, she has published thirteen more poetry collections, ranging from Opinions on Pain (Opinii despre durere, 1980, the Writers' Union Prize winner) to, most recently, The Wet Dog Is a Willow Tree (Ciinele ud e o salcie, 2013) and Listen to the Parentheses Cry (Ascult cum plang parantezele, 2016). THE HUNCHBACKS' BUS (AUTOBUZUL CU COCO A I) first appeared in 2001 and was reprinted in a second edition in 2010. Among her eight books of prose are Leopold Bloom's Soap (S punul lui Leopold Bloom, 1993, the Writers' Union Prize winner), The Sixty-Year-Old Woman and the Young Man (Sexagenara i tin rul, 2000, again the Writers' Union Prize winner), and her fifth and most recent novel, Harald and the Green Moon (Harald i luna verde, 2014). As a translator, Iuga has published 33 books mainly of German-language authors, among them E.T.A. Hoffmann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Elfriede Jelinek, Gunter Grass, Paul Celan, Michael Ende and Herta Muller. In addition to the "lifetime translation achievement award" granted by the Romanian Writers' Union, Iuga earned in 2007 the Friedrich-Gundolf prize of the German Academy for Language and Poetry, for exceptional contributions in the dissemination of the German culture worldwide, and in 2015, The Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.