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.

諾曼·馬內阿，1936年生於羅馬尼亞。納粹集中營的幸存者。1986年因當時的政治社會環境而離開羅馬尼亞，先到西柏林，1988年到美國。從此在美國定居，並以執教、寫作為生。主要作品有《十月，八點鍾》、《論小醜：獨裁與藝術傢》、《必須幸福》、《黑信封》、《流氓的歸來》等。

馬內阿在世界各國獲得瞭許多文學大奬，其中有意大利諾尼諾（Nonino）文學奬、西班牙《前衛報》最佳外文著作奬、美國全國猶太圖書奬、美國麥剋阿瑟天纔奬。2006年，《流氓的歸來》獲得瞭法國圖書的最高奬美第奇奬。