With the help of an expert group of Argentinian anthropologists, who had solved crimes committed by the Junta in their country, it is finally possible to identify the dead as victims of a plague epidemic from around the year 1800.įilip Florian succeeds with »Little Fingers« in using a playful approach to free literature from the burden of bearing testimony to history – it is not about the derivation of »truth«, but about stories which are worth being told. Petrus hears the story of the monk Gherghe, who had been persecuted by the Communists and who never removed his hat, but who had to cut his hair several times a day because it would otherwise grow within hours into a wild mane. He gets to know Aunt Paulina, who – uninvited – initiates him in the mysteries of fortune-telling using coffee grounds, as well as a businessman who had been dispossessed following the war, and now catches pigeons in his attic apartment and cooks them in white wine sauce. Petrus, the novel’s protagonist – an archaeologist who is plagued by stomach ulcers – is forced to delay his excavations, and observes the investigations in the little provincial town. The initial suspects are the Securitate – the bones of the little finger are missing from several of the skeletons. His début is about experiences with the dictatorship in his country: in the course of excavating a Roman Castrum near a small Carpathian town a mass grave is discovered. He spent five years in the Carpathian mountain resort Sinaia while writing his first, award-winning novel ✽egete mici« (2005, Engl: Little Fingers, 2009), which has by now been translated into eight languages. Following his studies in Geology and Geophysics he worked as a journalist for the journal ✼uvintul«, and later for Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle. Filip Florian was born in 1968 in Bucharest, where he still lives today.

Băiuțeii by Filip Florian