Translated from Romanian by
Matthew Zapruder and Radu Ioanid

Introduction by Andrei Codrescu

Paperback, 116 pages. Coffee House Press
(February 2008).
ISBN-10: 1566892066
ISBN-13: 978-1566892063

Available on www.amazon.co.uk

Appearing in English for the first time, Eugen Jebeleanu’s lyric testimonies to life under the Ceausescu government are profoundly unsentimental, yet deeply moving expressions of collective and personal guilt. Trapped between his clear understanding of the government’s corruption and brutality, and his own dilemmas as a public figure and reluctant favourite of Ceausescu, the poet found an outlet for his disillusionment in the spare, allegorical poems of his later life. Pensive and emotional, Jebeleanu’s final collection provides an enlightening, searing, and necessary record of life under totalitarian conditions. Both Andrei Codrescu’s introduction and the translator’s preface provide context for this politically and artistically significant book.

Born in 1911, Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu published twelve collections of poems, received numerous European literary awards, and was nominated by the Romanian Academy for the Nobel Prize. By the time of his death in 1991, Jebeleanu had transformed from a young, committed communist to a bitter and unsparing critic of the Ceausescu regime. Secret Weapon was his final collection.