Acclaimed writer Norman Manea’s Captives is a kaleidoscopic, imagistic, and stylistically innovative look into the lives of three characters: an alienated piano teacher, an engineer reflecting on his youth, and a veteran who suffers through daily life long after surviving the battles of World War II.

Divided into interrelated sections—narrated in first-, second-, and third- person voices—Captives explores the social and psychological conditions of postwar Romania: a loss of identity, a complicated sense of guilt and trauma from having survived the fascist government during World War II, and the rise of communism.