Fănuș Neagu

Ștefan Vasile Neagu, commonly known as Fănuș Neagu, was a Romanian novelist, playwright, journalist, and occasional film actor. Born to a peasant family in the Bărăgan Plain, he drew inspiration from that environment throughout his literary career. He undertook his training during the early stages of the communist regime, when he was still a teenager; in his early twenties, he was already pushing the limits of literary discourse, and the patience of ideological censors, acquiring his fame as an irrepressible rebel. Neagu's published debut came in 1959, and coincided with the onset of de-Stalinization. His short stories of the period pushed back against the influence of socialist realism, relying instead of neo-romantic and modernist models, as well as on Neagu's own resources as a raconteur. He became known for a richly metaphorical and oftentimes absurdist prose, which integrated him into the tradition of magic realism, and established his reputation as a unique voice in Romanian literature. The subtleties of this style also allowed Neagu to drop hints about communist crimes against the peasants in his debut novel, Îngerul a strigat, which appeared, to critical acclaim, in 1968.