The Little Communist Who Never Smiled

(Paperback, Main)

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Montreal 1976. A fourteen-year-old girl steps out onto the middle of the floor at the Montreal Forum and into history. 20 seconds on the uneven bars is it all it takes for Nadia Comaneci, the slight, unsmiling child from Communist Romania, to etch herself into the collective memory. The electronic scoreboard, as astonished as the spectators at what has just happened, shows 1.00. The judges have awarded an unprecedented perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics.

In The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, Lola Lafon tells the story of Comaneci's journey from growing up in rural Romania to her eventual defection to the United States in 1989. Adored by young girls in the west and appropriated as a political emblem by the Ceausescu regime, Comaneci's life was scrutinised wherever she went. Lafon's novel is a powerful re-imagining of a childhood in the spotlight of history, politics and destiny.

Reviews

An acrobatic, revealing novel ... Lafon follows in the twirling, ethereal steps of Nadia Comaneci * Tlrama *
Lola Lafon reinvents the life of star gymnast Nadia Comaneci ... she writes about the rewriting of history, of an individual story and a collective myth * Livres Hebdo *
A virtuoso blend of documentary and imagination ... startling * Nouvel Observateur *
Enthralling ... Lafon turns Comaneci into a mirror for all the madness directed at the female body * Les Inrockuptibles *
Lyrical, delicate and inspired * Le Figaro *

Author Bio

Lola Lafon is a writer and musician. Born in France, Lafon grew up in Sofia and Bucharest, and now lives in Paris. The Little Communist Who Never Smiled is Lafon's fourth novel; it has been translated into eleven languages and won ten literary prizes in France, including the Prix Ouest-France Etonnants Voyageurs, the Prix Jules Rimet and the Prix Version Femina.