Book 19 toppled – a memoir of oppression, surveillance and secrets

Burying the Typewriter by Carmen Bugan is a memoir of the author’s life as a child growing up in Communist Romania. Carmen and her family lived in the countryside where her parents ran a small shop which distributed groceries which were rationed at the time. In her early childhood the children had been brought up by their grandparents because their parents were imprisoned for spreading information not acceptable to the governing regime – pamphlets calling for freedom and encouraging an uprising. Even when the family was reunited Carmen’s father continued this activity, hence the buried typewriter of the title, until he decided to make a personal protest and was arrested in the capital carrying placards protesting the lack of freedom in the country.

Carmen considered that she had an idyllic childhood although the way that Romanian people lived in the late 1970s and early 1980s might have seemed primitive to children in the West. What she did not realise was that her family was always under observation by the police and also by neighbours, and even family members, who had been recruited as informers. When her father left her at home to go and make his protest he must have known that he would be arrested but he also condemned his family to oppressive measures including banning the children from school, inserting listening devices in the rooms of the house, and encouraging then to be shunned and abused by local people. Even when her father was released from prison the situation was very difficult for them and eventually they were allowed to seek exile in the USA.

This is a fascinating memoir which has been informed by Carmen’s recent access to the files of the Secret Police which have caused her to consider her childhood very differently. She is clear that her father suffered dreadfully for his desire for freedom but she shows how the rest of the family also faced a very difficult situation even though they had no responsibility for what had been done. It seems obvious that although she thought that the desire for freedom was a good one she considers her father to be selfish for not considering the consequences to his own family.

I thought that this was excellently written and it opened my eyes to what went on in Romania, a country I know little about. I shall keep this book and shelve it next to a memoir about East Germany (see here for a review) and one about growing up in Albania (see here) which are similar in many ways.