The Hooligan's Return is Norman Manea's long-awaited memoir, a portrait of an artist that ranges freely from his early childhood in prewar Romania to his return there in 1997.

In October l941, the entire Jewish population of Manea's native Bukovina was deported to concentration camps. Manea was among them, a child at the time, and his family spent four years there before they were able to return home. Embracing a Communist ethos as a teenager, he becomes disillusioned with the system in place in his country as he matures, having witnessed the growing injustices of dictatorship, and the false imprisonment of his father. But as a writer, Manea wrestles with the fear of losing his native language, his--real--homeland if he leaves his country, though it is clear to him that to stay under such a regime would be well-nigh impossible. Finally, in 1988, he settles in the United States, returning to Romania a decade later.

A harrowing memoir, The Hooligan's Return freely traverses time and place, life and literature, dream and reality, past and present. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, this is the story of a writer more interested in ethics and aesthetics than in politics, a literary man consumed by questions of solitude and solidarity.

诺曼·马内阿，1936年生于罗马尼亚。纳粹集中营的幸存者。1986年因当时的政治社会环境而离开罗马尼亚，先到西柏林，1988年到美国。从此在美国定居，并以执教、写作为生。主要作品有《十月，八点钟》、《论小丑：独裁与艺术家》、《必须幸福》、《黑信封》、《流氓的归来》等。

马内阿在世界各国获得了许多文学大奖，其中有意大利诺尼诺（Nonino）文学奖、西班牙《前卫报》最佳外文著作奖、美国全国犹太图书奖、美国麦克阿瑟天才奖。2006年，《流氓的归来》获得了法国图书的最高奖美第奇奖。