Norman Manea is Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer-in-residence at Bard College. A novelist and essayist, he first published in Communist Romania in the 1960s, producing a string of socially critical works that led to his departure in 1986. He has received many important cultural and literary prizes, including the MacArthur Fellowship (U.S) and the Nonino International Literary Prize (Italy). His most recent novel, The Lair (a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice”), was published by Yale University Press in 2012, as part of the critically acclaimed Margellos World Republic of Letters translation series.