This collection is Marin Sorescu's farewell to life - a book of wryly quizzical poems composed from his sickbed over five weeks as he waited for death to take him, his testament not just to human mortality and pain but to resistance and creative transformation.

Through a series of interviews with prominent Romanian literary figures and a selection of their writings, the author asks how, under Communism, did Romanian writers cope with constant ideological shifts aand, in turn, respond to the censorship that so often accompanied such changes.