This book is, I think, a 672-page meditation on whether that is true: whether literature, or imagination more broadly, can offer us any escape from the misery of human existence. In the walls of our prison there are dozens of doors with literary names, but they are all painted-on illusions no matter how much we read or write, we remain prisoners. It doesn't matter anyway, he says, because literature is not and cannot be a real escape. But he failed as a writer and ended up as a middle school Romanian teacher in a run-down suburb of Bucharest, dealing with head lice, annoying colleagues, indifferent students, and bizarre diktaks from the Party. He thought literature was itself an escape plan, that by becoming a writer he could break free. In his youth the narrator wanted to be a writer. Trapped in this earthly hell, leading lonely, miserable lives, what we need instead is an escape plan. Nobody needs literature, says the narrator of this bizarre, fascinating, sometimes wonderful book.
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