Fabula Festival: Tatiana Țîbuleac – The Glass Garden

The story is set in the 1980s, the former Soviet Republic of Moldova, when the shifting borders and political systems were on the horizon. The Glass Garden revolves around a Romanian-speaking girl Lastochka. Taken from the orphanage by a Russian woman, Lastochka is forced by her adoptive mother to pick up empty bottles and wash them, in a yard of miracles in the 1980s Chișinău, where Russian and Romanian are in a continuous clash. In the Soviet Union, the Moldovan population was subjected to Russification. Russian was the ordained language of communication, and Romanians were forced to write their language in Cyrillic. As a consequence, the protagonist is torn between the two languages, and two cultures. Masterfully portrayed by Tatiana Țîbuleac, the stories about ordinary folk living in blocks of flats in Chisinău shine a ray of light on Lastochka's childhood, defined by trauma and dashed hope. The multi-faceted novel provides the reader with an illuminating insight into Moldovan society – a country that sometimes feels very distant though geographically relatively close.

The novel has been translated into Slovenian by Aleš Mustar. 

Tatiana Țîbulea(1978) was born in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova. She studied at the Faculty of Journalism and Communications of the Moldova State University. In 1999, she joined the team at PRO TV Chis?ina˘u as a reporter, editor and news anchor and also worked in Moldova for UNICEF. Since 2008 she has been living in Paris. She made her debut as a writer in 2014 with a collection of short stories Fabule Moderne - Modern Tales. In 2017, her first novel, Vara în care mama a avut ochii verzi - The Summer When My Mother Had Green Eyes, was awarded the prize of the Writer´s Union of Moldova, as well as the Observator Cultural literary magazine prize in Bucharest. Her second novel, Grădina de sticlă  - The Glass Garden (2018), received the EU Prize for Literature. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Catalan, Croatian, Albanian and Bulgarian. Tatiana Tîbuleac won the National Award of the Republic of Moldova for her literary achievements.

The talk will be held in Romanian, with simultaneous translation into Slovenian.