Legend of the Walled-Up Wife

$12.95

Legend of the Walled-Up Wife is a collection of poetry originally written by Ileana Mălăncioiu. She is considered to be a hero and visionary in Romania, where she lived under the oppressive Ceauşescu regime, learning to make oblique statements both her art and political instrument. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin studied Romanian so she could movingly translate these poems and their powerful message. The use of legend, fable, and myth is richly important to both poets, resulting in a book of remarkable poetic compatibility.

Praise for Legend of the Walled-Up Wife

“Mălăncioiu often blurs the line between life and death, creating the sense of haunted dislocation one finds in Dickinson.” Ní Chuilleanáin’s translation, despite its colloquial tone, “gives the poems a shapeliness, a formality that complements their understated horror.” Mălăncioiu’s work is “a reminder of just how viscerally . . . art can speak, even through a censor.”
– Benjamin S. Grossberg, Antioch Review