The Life And Opinions Of Zacharias Lichter

A new translation of the only novel by lauded Romanian literary critic Matei Calinescu

It was the late 50s and the Communist regime of Romania was at its most punitively unforgiving when Matei Calinescu, who had just graduated form the University of Bucharest, conceived of Zacharias Lichter. I must create a myth, he jotted in his diary, and become its hero–that’s my idea! … A Judeo-German metaphysician, descended as if from the XVIIIth century (or that’s how he likes to think of himself) who talks about responsibility, about a dialogue of purity with God, about perplexity facing the void. In the following years, Zacharias Lichter, madman, fool, philsopher, and the weirdest of rebels without a cause would come to life in Calinescu’s fictional account of his life and opinions, a book written for his private amusement since he assumed the censors would never permit its publication. He was wrong about that, however. The censors were completely oblivious to the subversive humor and intent of his book, which became a cult classic. Miecre Cartarescu wrote in 2011 In his novel The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter, Matei Calinescu imagined, in a visionary manner a social system whose inhabitants were either thieves or beggars. Thieves would steal from beggars and beggars would seek alms from thieves. How did you know, Matei, that we would get to become that very society in such a short time? The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter paints an unforgettable picture of a free man in a false world.