Oleg Serebrian will launch his new the novel “Woldemar” in Bucharest on November 16. The protagonist is a boy aged 7-8, the grandson of the main character of my previous novel “Song of the Sea” Marta Skawronski.“Writing a novel about children for adults is an ambitious task and I don’t know how well I managed to carry it out. The readers and critics will pronounce. I hope the readers will love Woldemar and this will have a very long life,” Oleg Serebrian stated in an interview for IPN.
In a way, “Woldemar” is a follow-up to the “Song of the Sea” and some of the characters from that novel can be found here, after 33 years. As in the “Song of the Sea”, this is an atmosphere novel as I try to paint the daily reality in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1970s, but the main theme is the early genesis of a complex personality that is much more different than those around.
“Woldemar meets with difficulties in understanding who his family member are, what his ethnic origin is and what his homeland is. There is a flagrant contraction between what he is told at home and what he learns at school and this makes him more confused and distrustful. His most serious problems are those related to social adaptation and accommodation to the world outside, whose existence is sometimes questioned. There is also the subject of “non-love”. He suspects that no one loves him truly and this makes him have many questions,” said the author.
The launch is to take place as part of the Gaudeamus book fair. According to Oleg Serebrian, the Gaudeamus fair is the most important event of the kind in the Romanian language area. It is a very suitable occasion for launches. A lot of authors and literary critics from Romania, the Republic of Moldova and other countries gather together there.
The authors plans to also stage several launches in the Republic of Moldova and in Cernăuți next year. “I hope “Woldemar” will become available from the Cartier bookstores in Chisinau the coming days or definitely before the book fair of Bucharest. I don’t know the print run of the book, but I’m sure there will be enough books for everyone,” stated Oleg Serebrian.
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Oleg Serebrian is a Moldovan politologist, writer, diplomat and politician. In 2012, he was conferred the Special Award of the Writers Union of Moldova for the novel “Song of the Sea”. In 2013, he became a member of the Writers Union of Moldova.
