Flying Against the Arrow

The ‘unbearable 80s’, as the last decade of the Ceauşescu era has been called in Romania, are in the focus of this quasi-autobiographical work. The book vividly portrays the difficulties encountered by a young intellectual trying to shape himself under the oppressive regime and provides a stark depiction of a man’s intellectual suffocation under hard-line socialist rule. 

Horia-Roman Patapievici is a leading intellectual in contemporary Romania. He received his MA in Physics and his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bucharest. He is a writer, essayist and a researcher in the field of the history of science. He is also involved in politics: he is a member of the National Council for the Search of Security Archives.