Kindle Edition Amazon Kafka's House page on amazon Kafka's House Category:  Relationships Publisher: Pixiphoria ISBN-10:  B003NNV10O Type: Fiction This is, paradoxically, a luminous piece of fiction about a haunting time and place. It is a story about being born and growing up in a closed society, and learning the painful road to trusting others. More than anything else, it is the magical story of parental love, and its staunchness in face of danger, evil - or, simply, time.  A few years after I came to US, after a long discussion with my American friends about life in Eastern Europe, I started writing a novel about what meant to be a child in communist Romania.  I was not interested in my recent experiences as a student, as a young woman.  I wanted to understand the child I once was, because I felt that that child held the key to my future.  I wanted to understand what it meant to grow up there in the mid-sixties.   How were my friends, my schoolmates, how was I able to figure out what was happening around us?  How did we distinguish between bad and good - when they were labeled chaotically?  How was it that we laughed a lot, as children? More than anything else, I hoped that talking about that child, I would bring up the image of my young parents.  Of course, I knew them as a child, then a teenager, then an adult myself, as they grew older and older.  But writing is miraculous: suddenly, in my book, they had the same age I had.  It was magical. This strives to be a balanced story:  a writer's past.  Because - although the book  contains (auto)biographical  bits and pieces, it is, entirely, a piece of fiction.  Now, my greatest challenge remains to invent a future for that child in order to dig out the promise of the past.

An endearing child's-eye view of Romania under Communism
Review by Rick Skwiot, FL:

I had the great pleasure of recently reading the English-language Kindle edition of Gabriela Popa's novel Kafka's House. It gives an intimate and affecting view of 1968 Romania, at the time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, through the eyes of Silvia Marcu, a dreamy and imaginative 10-year-old learning about death, disappointment and informants in a totalitarian society.

Yet for all that -- and despite Silvia's frugal, circumscribed life -- the book has a warmth, humor and wisdom that elevate it above mere politics. Of particular appeal, too, is the look inside Romanian homes, families and lives as people were forced to adapt to grim realities. Her father adapts by drinking wine and plum brandy; a neighbor lady dreams of traveling to Prague; Silvia dreams of going to summer camp on the Black Sea.

But we also get to see the reality -- what they eat, how they travel, their folktales, their idioms, and daily life both in town and in the countryside. We also witness how they deal with a bureaucracy indifferent (as are most all bureaucracies) to personal wants. The reader glimpses, too, Silvia's ongoing struggles with the multiplication tables -- including her visualizing the number seven as seven dwarves hopping from one ladder of the multiplication table to another, as a means of finally enjoying math.

This is a charming novel.


Slice of life behind the Iron Curtain
Review by Jim Chambers, GA:

Having read Gabriela Popa's "When the Moon Had Feet," I knew the author could write vividly of life in Romania under communist rule during the Cold War era. In "Kafka's House," Ms. Popa presents a fascinating slice of life of ten-year-old Silvia Marcu's growing-up years in the Romanian village of Bacau in the 1960s.

Silvia and her younger sister Mirela have the usual children's adventures and misadventures, and even though they live in an Eastern Bloc country dominated by the Soviet Union, their lives are not so very different from those of children in many other countries. Silvia has her friends from school, her family visits relatives in the country, and she has to deal with the neighborhood bully.

The relative peace and calm are shattered, however, in the late 1960s, when the Soviet Union clamped down on individual rights. Romania, which had been one of the least repressive of the Iron Curtain countries, became a virtual police state after the Czechoslovakian uprising in 1968. Silvia's hopes for a pleasant summer camp on the Black Sea are shattered, and her family prepares for the worst as war looms on the horizon.

"Kafka's House" is a charming look at life in Romania during the Cold War era. Ms. Popa sprinkles traditional Romanian folk tales throughout the book, mostly told by Ana, one of the elderly Lecca sisters who live in Silvia's village.

Although the characters in "Kafka's House" are fictional, the novel is at least partly autobiographical, based on the author's own experiences in Romania as a child. I looked up the town of Bacau, and it's a real place.

Five stars and highly recommended reading for just about anyone.

Author: "1984? I lived it."
Review by Mark Ledbetter, Japan:

Kafka's House will not knock you out at the beginning. The story moves slowly in this short novel, at a 10-year old girl's pace. Through the girl, you live a life of poverty in 1968 Romania. But there's no self-pity. She's no different than anyone else. EVERYONE is poor, and all have Big Brother watching in the background.

Until Russia invades Czechoslovakia.

Romania goes on alert and Big Brother comes out of the background. The tentacles of absolute state power slither across everything, strangling the dreams of children and twisting the dreams of adults into something sinister.