A splendid, violent spring suddenly grips Bucharest in the 1980s after a brutal winter. Tolea, an eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his job as a high school teacher on "moral grounds," is investigating his father's death forty years after the fact, and is drawn into a web of suspicion and black humor.
"Reading 'The Black Envelope,' one might think of the poisonous 'black milk' of Celan's 'Death Fugue' or the claustrophobic air of mounting terror in Mr. Appelfeld's 'Badenheim 1939.' . . . Mr. Manea offers striking images and insights into the recent experience of Eastern Europe."-New York Times Book Review
- ISBN10 0300188625
- ISBN13 9780300188622
- Publish Date 14 May 2014 (first published 1 June 1995)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 326
- Language English