Soldiers

Adi is forty, newly single, and four years into a doctorate on manele , the Roma pop music that respectable Romania despises, which is why he lives in Ferentari.

• He knows the rules: never give your real name, and never take a man home from a bar

In March he takes home Alberto the Fist, who went to prison at fifteen, came out at thirty, and now lives off a gangster cousin who feeds him, slaps him around, and keeps an eye on him. He has a bad back, no ID, and a gift for making a man feel loved. By May he has moved in.

The doctoral grant is going on beer and slot machines, and Adi insists on calling it fieldwork. The money will not last the summer. Soldiers caused a scandal in Romania, won two novel-of-the-year prizes, and was adapted into a film directed by Ivana Mladenović and starring the author.

Schiop writes the way the neighbourhood talks—funny, obscene, sparing nobody, least of all himself.