A Luminous Future is a riveting eye-witness account of the inner strength it takes, for a young child, his family, and the people of his little village, to overcome adversity during a brutal period in the history of Transilvania. The book is written with the goal of learning to recognize injustice, which was indelibly impressed in his mind.
The book is a reflection of the author on events that happened in his childhood, and is told in the voice of a man, not a child. This allows the author the liberty of using a richer, fuller language, and to offer a broad description of the historical context, in a way that would not be accommodated through a child’s voice. “More than fifty years have passed since I witnessed my father’s arrest … I’ve since left Romania, lived in Italy, and ultimately settled in Australia. No matter where I’ve been, though, those scenes have continued to play in my head.”
To me, the title of the book can be read as having two opposite connotations: first, the ironic connotation of empty promises by the communists, “… villages were crawling with clean-shaven people from the city who spied on everybody, asked uncomfortable questions and insisted that the villagers join the Workers’ Party, in exchange for promises of a new life and a luminous future.”
But second, and perhaps more profound, is the positive connotation of writing about the past as a way to shine a bright light to the future, “For my new grandson, for future grandchildren, and for anybody interested in learning how a wicked regime trampled brutally on innocent people’s lives.” It is the value of life, tradition, and the capacity for survival, inherited from ancestors, played by us, and given through us to a future generation.
A Luminous Future is a riveting eye-witness account of the inner strength it takes, for a young child, his family, and the people of his little village, to overcome adversity during a brutal period in the history of Transilvania. The book is written with the goal of learning to recognize injustice, which was indelibly impressed in his mind.
The book is a reflection of the author on events that happened in his childhood, and is told in the voice of a man, not a child. This allows the author the liberty of using a richer, fuller language, and to offer a broad description of the historical context, in a way that would not be accommodated through a child’s voice. “More than fifty years have passed since I witnessed my father’s arrest … I’ve since left Romania, lived in Italy, and ultimately settled in Australia. No matter where I’ve been, though, those scenes have continued to play in my head.”
To me, the title of the book can be read as having two opposite connotations: first, the ironic connotation of empty promises by the communists, “… villages were crawling with clean-shaven people from the city who spied on everybody, asked uncomfortable questions and insisted that the villagers join the Workers’ Party, in exchange for promises of a new life and a luminous future.”
But second, and perhaps more profound, is the positive connotation of writing about the past as a way to shine a bright light to the future, “For my new grandson, for future grandchildren, and for anybody interested in learning how a wicked regime trampled brutally on innocent people’s lives.” It is the value of life, tradition, and the capacity for survival, inherited from ancestors, played by us, and given through us to a future generation.
Five stars.