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Book review: Red Hands
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Red Hands
by Colin Sargent
Barbican Press, £12.99
Haz de necaz. The term – Romanian for rueful laughter – fittingly appears a number of times in this novel. It pretty much describes Red Hands’ tone – tragedy hardened further by comedy.
After his extraordinary second novel, The Boston Castrato, Colin Sargent shifts his intelligent and sharp focus from the 1920s USA to the Romania of the 1960s onwards.
Employing a part-autobiographical, part-fictionalised first person account, he empathetically describes the troubled life of Iordana Ceauscescu, wife of Valentin, the eldest child of Nicolae and Elena.
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