Trilogy of Theophil Magus - the Truth

A BOOK FOREVER - A MASTERPIECE TRILOGY of THEOPHIL MAGUS - The Truth
by Leonard Oprea

A GENUINELY DIFFERENT VOICE
by Vladimir Tismaneanu

Leonard Oprea, a brilliant Romanian writer, the author of important fiction and non-fiction works, is one of the finest, truly original contemporary East European writers.
I have known him personally since 1990, but I had read his works long before that. Let me emphasize that Leonard Oprea, as an anti-Communist dissident played an important role in the oppositional culture during Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, in Romania. Although widely known as a brilliant fiction writer, his works were censored and eventually banned in the late 1980s. He was involved in the underground anti-dictatorship activities and consequently suffered continuous police harassments. His outstanding works of fiction, among which the poignant novel Camasa de forta (The Straitjacket) and an acclaimed volume of short stories Radiografia Clipei ( The X-Ray of an Instant ) were banned by the dictatorship's censors and came out only after the anti-Communist revolution in December 1989. Leonard Oprea's books received the highest praise from the most influential critics in Romania who rightly compared his vision to works by Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and, to some extent, Borges, Paulo Coelho, and Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. Elusively written and hard to be pigeonholed in simplistic formulas, Leonard Oprea's writings are truly original and give voice to a unique human experience and sensibility. History and psychology interact in a com