Matei Discovers Freedom – A reading with Catalin Dorian Florescu

Young Matei grows up in the vibrant Bucharest of the 1930s, but his family loses everything under the dictatorship. Matei is convicted for writing political poems and sentenced to hard labour in the Danube Delta, where nature is fascinating yet unforgiving, and life is hard – sometimes even deadly. It is the humanity among the prisoners that keeps him alive – as does the hatred. Years later, he is pardoned and finds family happiness, yet never true peace. When, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Matei sees ‘the handsome Pană’ – an interrogator – again, he resolves to confront the ghosts of the past. And he hatches a plan.

Through the lens of a single life, Catalin Dorian Florescu uses poetic imagery to recount the drama of Eastern Europe, which continues to this day. A profound reflection on happiness, revenge, justice and the question: when is a person truly free?