wowowow, one dream coming to life

one of my favorite books, "fiul risipitor" (the prodigal son) by radu tudoran, will be made into a film (starring vanessa redgrave among others)! the news in romanian here. words cannot express how exciting this is for me, the book is beautiful, and feminist, and by a guy (a guy who wrote an amazing, complex, 3D and fully sympathetic female character for the story to center around), and a romance at its core but in a very non-romancey way, while the story is subtly an anti-war manifesto and at a deeper level about the impact of violence and the toll that patriarchal social norms take on people's lives, about what independence, and happiness, and loyalty and nonconformity may mean for men and women, what really counts in life, and in love, how all this is played out with/around two people who are too free-thinking and earnest for their own good (in this society). and when i articulate those things, even though that's all there, it sounds nothing like what the book is actually like. also, it's perhaps the only romanian book (and one of the few books in general) that i've read where the female character's sexuality is not objectified in one way or another - it's just part of her and of the plot, and it's real, not a caricature. i love this book to pieces (in spite of all the suffering endured by the heroine and various other assorted characters), i first read it during one summer vacation when i was maybe 11... and found out at the end of that vacation that my best friend andreea had also coincidentally read it and loved it too - but we weren't sure why it had struck such a chord... at some level i'm still not sure. it's just mesmerizing! i feel like i totally have a special relationship with this book. so i hope the film will do it some justice. they better not make it non-feminist or i will break some... oh, right, i'm a pacifist. well, if the movie sucks my wrath shall become known to all!!

ps: in my mind, i can't reconcile these two images i have of radu tudoran: he's either the guy who wrote "toate pinzele sus!" or the guy who wrote "fiul risipitor," never both. although, reading "al treilea pol al pamintului" came close to bringing the two together (somehow).

i should've written this in romanian as in english it makes no sense, i'm sure.

(many thanx to 2na for bringing this to my attention)