Barbie / Babelcube Inc. (ePub)

An effective, sophisticated and accurate piece of timeless narrative, a testimony of the individual truth that is always ingrained within the actual and social facts of history.Between the last days of the "e;Geniul din Carpati,"e; or Nicolae Ceausescu, and the years immediately following his famous execution by firing squad that was shown live on TV (25 December 1998), Romania fell into the uncertainty of a revolution that was never implemented in practice. Reflecting a society split between the desire for freedom and the latent immobility of an entire generation born of the backwardness of the Ceauseschian regime, is Nicu, a teacher living in Bucharest. Within the short span of a few months, Nicu finds himself unemployed and has to face the hardships of a job that is no longer there, money that is scarce, and food that is lacking. Mihail, a preadolescent boy of the underground, lives with his friend Barbie within the sewer system that cuts across the city. Always populated by a young humanity, the sewers of Bucharest form a jungle where the law of the strongest prevails, where one gets high sniffing Aurolac from plastic bags and in order to eat one prostitutes oneself in exchange for a handful of dollars. One day, on the snow-covered meadows of the Tineretului Park, that green space of Bucharest and the invisible wall of partition separating the good neighborhoods from the periphery, Nicu's and Mihail's stories cross.