Description
Book SynopsisThis book introduces students and the general public to the post-Stalinist phase of totalitarianism, focusing on Romania under the Ceausescu dictatorship, through the dual optic of scholarship and fiction, in a story about a family surviving difficult times under a totalitarian regime due to the strength of their love.
Trade ReviewMoving between extraordinary and ordinary lives, between Romania and the United States, velvet totalitarianism and relative freedom, dire need and consumerism, evoking her Romanian experience in the seventies, the emigration to the U.S. of her family in the eighties, and the 1989 uprising in Timisoara and Bucharest that marked the end of Ceausescu's regime, Claudia Moscovici offers her readers a multifaceted book - Velvet Totalitarianism - that is at once a love story, a political novel, and a mystery. -- Sanda Golopentia, professor of French, Brown University
This vivid novel by Claudia Moscovici, historian of ideas and wide-ranging literary critic, traces a family of Romanian refugees from the stifling communist dictatorship of their homeland through their settling in the United States during the 1980s. This fascinating and compelling story is at home historically accurate, exciting, sexy, and a real page-turner. -- Edward K. Kaplan, professor in the Humanities at Brandeis University
Claudia Moscovici's first novel, Velvet Totalitarianism, triumphs on several levels: as a taut political thriller, as a meditation on totalitarianism, as an expose of the Ceausescu regime, and as a moving fictionalized memoir of one family's quest for freedom. -- Ken Kalfus, author of the novel A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
A deeply felt, deftly rendered novel of the utmost importance to any reader interested in understanding totalitarianism and its terrible human cost. Urgent, evocative, and utterly convincing, Velvet Totalitarianism is a book to treasure, and Claudia Moscovici is indeed a writer to watch, now and into the future. -- Travis Holland, author of The Archivist's Story
In Velvet Totalitarianism, Claudia Moscovici makes her readers viscerally feel the corrosive psychological demoralization and numbing fear totalitarian regimes impose on those who live under them. At the same time, with style and wit, and informed by her experiences as a child in communist Romania and then as an immigrant in the United States, she tells a story of resilience and hope. Velvet Totalitarianism is a novel well worth reading, both for its compelling narrative and for its important message. -- Michael Kort, professor of social science at Boston University, author of The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath
The author experienced totalitarianism personally while living in Romania with her family during the Nicolae Ceausescu regime. And many of her own experiencies find their way into her historically rich piece of fiction. * Heritage Newspapers, October 8, 2009 *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Acknowledgements Chapter 2 1. Introduction Chapter 3 2. Romanian Stalinism and Post-Stalinism Chapter 4 3. Nicolae Ceausescu and his Rule (1965-1989) Chapter 5 4. The Secret Police, or Securitate Chapter 6 5. Birth Control Policies and the Romanian Orphanages Chapter 7 6. The Romanian Revolution of December, 1989 Chapter 8 7. Writing Politics Chapter 9 8. Bibliography Chapter 10 Reincarnations of Love: a novel Chapter 11 Part I Chapter 12 Part II Chapter 13 Part III Chapter 14 About the Author
