Der Weisse König

It is a book about the last three years of the Ceausescu-regime in Romania. Probably the most bizarre of the Eastern-European communist dictatorships at that time. It is consequently written from the point of view of a little boy. It is the year of the Chernobyl catastrophe. The father is taken away by the secret service in front of the boy. He is calmed down by his father with a story he invents for him: he hast to go somewhere in the countryside to work for a few days. Now his long waiting for his father’s return begins. He tries to fill in his father’s place for her mother to alleviate her pain. He is humiliated at school, by other school kids or just by evil, abusive adults. School-children are constantly hit by their teachers. This is something what was unthinkable other communist countries.
Everything is told by this twisted viewpoint of a child – none of the horrors are explicitly described. The reader must conclude from the child’s telling what is actually happening. For me it was a disturbing experience. After reading about this part of the Romanian life I can understand why Ceausescu was executed after a farce tribunal during the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe.