RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BookIn Mihail Sebastian’s subtle novel For Two Thousand Years, first published in Romania in 1934, Sebastian chronicles the rise of Codreanu’s movement and presents us with a nuanced view of the individual caught in a time of radicalization and rising xenophobia. Philip Ó Ceallaigh’s fluid translation of the novel comes to us at the right moment … The diarist, who is never named, draws us into his struggle as a Jewish intellectual during the rise of fascism. The absence of a name has the effect of both associating him with Sebastian as well as placing him in the role of an everyman Jewish Romanian … Sebastian’s nuanced novel does not simply decry Romanian history as another, inevitable episode in a 2,000-year-old cycle of anti-Semitic violence. The strength and timeliness of this novel lie in the diarist’s grappling with how to respond as an individual to what we now call hate speech and to violence on the university campus.
