Lavinia Braniște: A guide through the everyday
– Romania
Born in Brăile in 1983, Lavinia Braniște is a prose writer, poet, author of children’s books and a translator. She published Povești cu mine (Stories with Me), her first poetry collection, when she was twenty-three years old. “I am fairly relieved that this book is very hard to get these days,” she says. She then published short story collections such as Cinci minute pe zi (Five Minutes a Day) and Escapada (An Escapade), as well as the successful novel Interior zero. Alina Purcaru, a writer of the same generation, said the following about the book: “An inspiring prose which, in true Ionesco fashion, balances on a razor’s edge between despair, helplessness and laughter.” In her minimalist style, the author ironically describes the everyday reality of people born in Romania in the 1980s. She does not avoid difficult issues in her children’s books either, where e.g. in Melcușorul (The Little Snail) she deals with the topic of parents leaving Romania to work abroad and leaving their kids at home with their grandparents.