Adrian Schiop: I am writing about myself
– Romania
Born in 1973 in Porumbacu de Jos, a southern Romanian town of 3,000 people, Adrian Schiop is a writer and a journalist. He studied linguistics and Romanian language and literature and worked as a teacher in the countryside and a house painter before getting a degree in anthropology. “I’ve tried out so much that anthropology seemed just a cherry on top of a dilettante’s cake,” he says. His dissertation thesis dealt with “manele”, a genre of pop folk music associated with the lowest strata of Romanian society. He wrote three novels: pe bune/pe invers (straight/bent), Zero grade Kelvin and Soldații. Poveste de Ferentari (The Soldiers: Story of Ferentari). All his books have a strong autobiographical character, especially the last one which describes a homosexual relationship between Adi, an anthropologist, with a member of a gypsy clan based in Bucharest’s Ferentari slum. Ivan Mladenović adapted the book into a film of the same name where Schiop played the title role.