NORMAN MANEA & MIHAIL SEBASTIAN -THE ISSUE OF JEWISH IDENTITY
NORMAN MANEA & MIHAIL SEBASTIAN -THE ISSUE OF JEWISH IDENTITY

Summary/Abstract: Norman Manea is a writer who lived under the sign of two dictatorships: the Antonescu dictatorship and then the Communist one. The return of the hooligan (2003) is an „autobiographical novel”, which includes the avatars of the writer’s biography, from the pre-war period, to the Second World War, the communist period, to the present. The return of the hooligan is a document with the value of testimony and confession, a book in which is evoked, in an original style, the tragedy of the Jews in Romania from the two terror regimes, illustrating the drama of lack of identity and existential uncertainty, the title and content of Norman Manea’s autobiographical novel can be put in relation to Mihail Sebastian’s book How I became hooligan. At the same time, the book can also be considered as a reaction to the conduct of some intellectuals of the interwar period who adhered to the legionary ideology (Mircea Eliade, Petre Tutea, Constantin Noica etc.). The novel can also be interpreted as a response to Nae Ionescu’s famous preface to Sebastian’s novel of two thousand years. In this context, it can be seen that the return of the hooligan represents a search for his own identity, but also an attempt to understand the inner contradictions of Jewish writers in Romanian literature (Mihail Sebastian, Norman Manea etc.).

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