SOURCE: "In a Sultanistic State," in the Times Literary Supplement, No. 4671, October 9, 1992, p. 26.

In the following review, Stepan states that the chief merit of Codrescu's The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution is its documentation of how myths are replaced by counter-myths.

What do the current presidential and parliamentary elections in Romania tell us about the nature of its "transition" from communism, or, indeed, about the "revolution" of 1989?

To get a feeling of the elation, fear, confusion, uncertainty and disillusionment that surrounded the fall of Ceausescu in the winter of 1989, one couldn't do better than read the account by the poet Andrei Codrescu of his return to Romania at the time, after a twenty-five year exile in the United States. One of his best chapters, entitled "Seize the Means of Projection", describes the young activists, peasants and former officials in front of...