If there is a literary subject which has been treated
again and again – and will continue to be so in the future – is that of women.
From Flaubert’s Madame Bovary to DH Lawrence’s Women in Love, and from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, women as main characters have occupied a prominent role in literature. We can go further back to Medea, Eloise, or Viola in The Twelfth Night, and many other strong (or less so but still fascinating) women characters.
Before I will be accused of misogynism, I will hurry to say that I am compelled to write this post because of a forthcoming book which features an exceptional woman, a character who, although crippled by mental instability, is the strongest character in the world she inhabits. Also, this book is written by a woman author.
I am talking here about Oana Stoica-Mujea’s Anatomical Clues (published originally in Romanian as Indicii anatomice in 2009). I hope Ramona Mitrica from Profusion Publishers will not mind me blabbing about the book prior to its UK publishing date.
Although there have been other women writers of crime fiction in Romania, most notably the late Rodica Ojog-Brasoveanu, who introduced interesting women characters in her work, it seems to me Oana has created one of the strongest female leads in Romanian literature. Although her main character in Anatomical Clues, Detective Iolanda Stireanu, is fighting an army of internal demons, bereavement and childhood trauma, she is still the strongest person in the book. Self exiled in her “ivory tower” on the top-most floor of a Bucharest block of flats, Iolanda fights crime aided by her razor-sharp intellect, by high end technology and a not-too-willing proxy, a woman journalist who acts on the ground as her eyes and ears.
I won’t go on too much about the plot as I don’t want to ruin your reading experience. Suffice to say that Oana Stoica-Mujea’s style of writing is gripping, gutsy, and full of unexpected twists. I know the expression sounds trite, but this story really is a page-turner that will keep you hooked.
Anatomical Clues is part of the Profusion Crime Series initiated by ProfusionPublishers, a new independent British publisher that brings the finest Eastern European crime writing on the English-speaking book market.
- - - -
edit July 2012
Anatomical Clues is now available in paperback from ProfusionPublishers, Amazon.co.uk, and can be ordered from Waterstones.com. It is also available as a Kindle e-book.
You can read a free sample on Profusion’s website by clicking here
From Flaubert’s Madame Bovary to DH Lawrence’s Women in Love, and from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, women as main characters have occupied a prominent role in literature. We can go further back to Medea, Eloise, or Viola in The Twelfth Night, and many other strong (or less so but still fascinating) women characters.
Before I will be accused of misogynism, I will hurry to say that I am compelled to write this post because of a forthcoming book which features an exceptional woman, a character who, although crippled by mental instability, is the strongest character in the world she inhabits. Also, this book is written by a woman author.
I am talking here about Oana Stoica-Mujea’s Anatomical Clues (published originally in Romanian as Indicii anatomice in 2009). I hope Ramona Mitrica from Profusion Publishers will not mind me blabbing about the book prior to its UK publishing date.
Although there have been other women writers of crime fiction in Romania, most notably the late Rodica Ojog-Brasoveanu, who introduced interesting women characters in her work, it seems to me Oana has created one of the strongest female leads in Romanian literature. Although her main character in Anatomical Clues, Detective Iolanda Stireanu, is fighting an army of internal demons, bereavement and childhood trauma, she is still the strongest person in the book. Self exiled in her “ivory tower” on the top-most floor of a Bucharest block of flats, Iolanda fights crime aided by her razor-sharp intellect, by high end technology and a not-too-willing proxy, a woman journalist who acts on the ground as her eyes and ears.
I won’t go on too much about the plot as I don’t want to ruin your reading experience. Suffice to say that Oana Stoica-Mujea’s style of writing is gripping, gutsy, and full of unexpected twists. I know the expression sounds trite, but this story really is a page-turner that will keep you hooked.
Anatomical Clues is part of the Profusion Crime Series initiated by ProfusionPublishers, a new independent British publisher that brings the finest Eastern European crime writing on the English-speaking book market.
- - - -
edit July 2012
Anatomical Clues is now available in paperback from ProfusionPublishers, Amazon.co.uk, and can be ordered from Waterstones.com. It is also available as a Kindle e-book.
You can read a free sample on Profusion’s website by clicking here
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