The book creates a story which covers 20 years of Romanian contemporary history, beginning in 1968 (the year Stefan Constantinescu was born) and ends with the Revolution in 1989. For the reader of this children’s book an uncanny quality emerges in the tension between the naïvety of the form and the dark surrealism of its content. Constantinescu created the work in order to recount his experience – living under the regime of Ceausescu – to his daughter. In the process he encounters the challenge of telling the story and of passing on history to younger generations as he weaves text and photos from his own life with briefly stated historical facts in textbook form.
