“Cristina’s world”, by Stelian Ţurlea

Integral Publishing House publishes a new micro-novel signed by Stelian Ţurlea, the fifteenth published by this publishing house in the last two years.

A novel about women, love, failures, renunciation, resistance, longing, art and death – and about how much we lose if we don’t understand them all. The heroines are a group of women united by a desire, never clearly expressed, about which it is difficult to say if they realized or will ever talk to each other, a longing.

All starting from a famous painting, preserved at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the most famous paintings in the world, which has inspired generations of artists and delighted millions of visitors, appeared in films and books, hangs in children on the walls of the homes of millions of anonymous Americans: “a woman crawling across a field, towards the top of a hill, maybe picking flowers, you don’t understand at first that she’s crawling or that she’s picking flowers, later you find out that in the top of the hill is her house and she asks for help, you find out later who she is, you find out later her shocking story”.

The painting is called “Christina’s World”, and the painter, Andrew Wyeth, created it in 1948. Seventy years later, Cristina Ţurlea painted an interpretation of this painting, exhibited in the Interpretations exhibition, organized in 2019 at the Center of Architectural Culture of the UAR. His name was Longing.

The characters of the micro-novel can all be found, from one point of view, in the mentioned painting.

Stelian Ţurlea is the author of thirty-four novels, one volume of short stories, one volume of memoirs (or non-fictional literature), twelve non-fiction books, ten books for children and two translations. He took care of seven albums. He received several awards for literature and journalistic activity.

Stelian Țurlea – Cristina’s world. Romanian. Integral Publishing House, Nod Collection. 152 pages