The Censor’s Notebook

A fascinating narrative of life in communist Romania, & a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of literature & censorship.

 
The novel begins with a seemingly non-fiction frame story—an exchange of letters between the author & Emilia Codrescu, the female chief of the Secret Documents Office in Romania’s feared State Directorate of Media & Printing, the government branch responsible for censorship. 

Codrescu had been responsible for the burning & shredding of the censors’ notebooks & the state secrets in them, but prior to fleeing the country in 1974 she had stolen 1 of these notebooks.
 
Now, 40 years later, she makes the notebook available to Liliana for the newly instituted Museum of Communism. The work of a censor—a job about which it is forbidden to talk—is revealed in this notebook, which discloses not only the structures of the institution of censorship but also the life behind the scenes for one of those deciding the fate of books, with their distress, outrage, humor & guilt. It’s just 5 months in the life of censor Filofteia Moldovean, but they are so tightly packed with events that they give a sense of this mysterious institution as a world unto itself.

Professional readers & ideological error hunters, beset with hundreds of manuscripts, strict deadlines, & threatening penalties, the censors lose their identity, &, often frazzled by neuroses & other illnesses, seek healing, sometimes through writing. A Censor’s Notebook is a window into the intimate workings of censorship under communism, steeped in mystery & secrets & lies, confirming the power of literature to capture personal & political truths.

°°° 

Liliana Corobca wrote a 3-act monologue, Censorship for Beginners (2014), in Austria. 

Monica Cure is a Romanian-American writer, translator, & dialogue specialist.