Biographie et fiction dans les romans dystopiques de Oana Orlea et Virgil Gheorghiu

Abstract

This article analyses the theme of fear in Le grand Exterminateur by Virgil Gheorghiu and Un sosie en cavale by Oana Orlea. Romanian writers who chose the exile in France during the Cold War describe in their novels a dystopic world, where the dominant fear of the communist Romanian secret police, the Securitate, transforms the whole world in a prison cell. Inspired by their biography, Orlea’s and Gheorghiu’s novels describe the relationship between the world they escaped from and France, their new home, as permeable, thus creating a fictional world from which escape is impossible. The protagonists of Orlea’s and Gheorghiu’s novels are convinced that the Securitate is watching everybody and is just as omniscient and omnipresent as Orwell’s Big Brother. From a narrative point of view, both Orlea and Gheorghiu use a formula that brings together the detective novel, the dystopia, and some references to their own biographies.