An Instinctive Feeling of Innocence: Dana Grigorcea and Alta L. Price
Green Apple Books on the Park | 1231 9th Avenue | San Francisco, CA
Swiss-Romanian writer Dana Grigorcea and translator Alta L. Price discuss An Instinctive Feeling of Innocence.
An Instinctive Feeling of Innocence (Seagull Books) is the stunning second novel from Swiss-Romanian writer Dana Grigorcea and translated by Alta L. Price. With humor and wit, Grigorcea captures a world full of myriad surprises where new and old cultures weave together—a world bursting with character and spirit. Victoria has just recently moved from Zurich back to her hometown of Bucharest when the bank where she works is robbed. Put on leave so that she can process the trauma of the robbery, Victoria strolls around town. Each street triggers sudden visions as memories from her childhood under the Ceausescu regime begin to mix with the radically changed city and the strange world in which she now finds herself. As the walls of reality begin to crumble, Victoria and her former self cross paths with the bank robber and a rich cast of characters, weaving a vivid portrait of Romania and one woman’s self-discovery.
Dana Grigorcea is a Swiss-Romanian essayist, novelist, and children’s book author. Her debut novel, Baba Rada, won the Swiss Literary Pearl. She lives in Zürich.
Alta L. Price runs a publishing consultancy specialized in literature and nonfiction texts on art, architecture, design, and culture. Alta’s translations from Italian and German include works by Giorgio Agamben, Dana Grigorcea, Alexander Kluge, Aldo Novarese, and Martin Mosebach. Alta’s latest books are Juli Zeh’s novel New Year—finalist for the 2022 PEN America Translation Prize as well as the Helen & Kurt Wolff Prize—and Mithu Sanyal’s novel Identitti.
Sarah Rose Etter is the author of RIPE (Scribner), and The Book of X (Two Dollar Radio), winner of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award. Her short fiction collection, Tongue Party, was selected by Deb Olin Unferth to be published as the winner of the 2011 Caketrain Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, TIME, BOMB, The Cut, VICE, and more.