Life Begins on Friday

Winner of the EU Prize for Literature 2013

A murder mystery, a tale of time-travel and a wonderful evocation of the "spirit" of fin de siecle Central Europe. This award-winning novel takes the reader and the hero back in time to life more simple and more romantic.

A young man is found lying unconscious on the outskirts of Bucharest. No one knows who he is and everyone has a different theory about how he got there. Within the pages of this charming book, the stories of a variety of characters unfold, each closely interwoven with the next, and outlining the features of what ultimately turns out to be the most important and most powerful character of all: the city of Bucharest itself. The plot of Life Begins on Friday takes place during the last 13 days of 1897 and culminates in a beautiful tableau of the future as imagined by the characters we have come to know and love. We might even say that it is we who inhabit their future, and so too does Dan Creţu, alias Dan Kretzu, the present-day journalist hurled back in time by some mysterious process for just long enough to allow us a wonderful glimpse into a remote, almost forgotten world.

Parvulescus' book is a magical tale full of enchanting characters who can carry the reader to another time....