Early life Ștefan Neagu was born on 5 April 1932 at
Grădiștea,
Brăila County, in what was then the
Kingdom of Romania. His was a peasant family, and he remained attached spiritually to both that social class and the geographical contours of the
Bărăgan. As he himself put it in a 1987 interview: "The people, the water, the grassland of that spot are what's dearest to me in the world." His parents Vasile and Paraschiva (née Miroslav) knew him under the pet name "Fănuș", which became his favorite signature, The future writer had a brother and a sister; only the latter was still alive at Fănuș's death in 2011. In old age, Neagu liked to tell highly exaggerated stories of his childhood poverty, to see if those present would believe them—for instance, he circulated the claim that his
feet had been bound, so that his parents would not have to spend money on shoes. In other contexts, he described his childhood as "fabulous" and rich in life lessons. His childhood friends, many of whom appear in his work under their nicknames, included both Romanians and
Romanies, as he reportedly "made no difference". Aged eleven, The boy completed primary school in his village at the height of World War II. His father had been mobilized in the
Romanian Land Forces, and Paraschiva had to provide for her children. In 1944, she obtained Fănuș a scholarship for the Military High School, which had been moved from
Iași to
Câmpulung. He arrived there by train, alongside
Wehrmacht soldiers who "fed me all the way there". His education was supposed to be fulfilled at the Eminescu School of Literature, which he attended in 1951–1952; During this time, he lived "more clandestinely than not", with
Nicolae Velea and other young authors, in a small apartment at 13 Roma Street. He was also colleagues with three other authors noted for their talent:
Radu Cosașu,
Nicolae Labiș, He also defended the School of Literature, which had come to be derided as a communist institution: "I would not be the present-day Fănuș Neagu without [its influence]." In 1953, he worked for a few months as a substitute teacher of Romanian in
Largu, outside
Făurei. He had also begun resenting the regime, and was especially interested in subverting its
censorship apparatus. At least in part, he modeled his life on that of Istrati, a vagabond-writer hailing from the same geographical area as he. His colleagues included , who remembered him as "loud", but also "bursting with talent, in a Romanian language adhering to rules that I myself could not comprehend." Neagu was also one of the newspaper's editors, between 1954 and 1956, or an ultimately failed local variant. These contributions were delayed by Neagu's marginal involvement in the
youth opposition movement of 1956. Sympathetic to its demands, Neagu reportedly listened in as student leaders
Paul Goma and
Alexandra Indrieș voiced their support for the restoration of
Greater Romania. According to recollections published by eyewitness Irimie Străuț, this would explain why Neagu was for a while "chased out" from editorial offices, and placed under surveillance by the communist secret police, called
Securitate.
Cocoșul roșu and other short-prose samples finally appeared in 1959, bound together as
Ningea în Bărăgan ("It Was Snowing in the Bărăgan"). This volume was published at
Editura Tineretului (in the "toiling peasants' collection"), and carried illustrations by
Eugen Mihăescu. According to scholar
Dumitru Micu, these writings still adhered to the formal requirements, with depictions of "
class conflict" and borrowings from Sadoveanu and
Mikhail Sholokhov's prose. However, Neagu was veering away from "dogmatism" by introducing "unusual story-lines" (evoking the likes of Istrati and
Constantin Sandu-Aldea, but also
William Faulkner and
John Steinbeck), as well as a personal touch—namely, the "poetry of the Bărăgan". Ștefănescu likewise proposes that Neagu was allowing himself to break out of socialist-realist conventions primarily by selecting "eccentrics" and "weirdos" as his protagonists. One story,
Zgomotul ("The Noise"), depicted a grocer-turned-counterfeiter who ran a money-making device powered by unwitting shoppers, a boy who overfeeds on stolen cakes, and a physician who steals his grandfather's gold chain, one link at a time. Revisiting Neagu's career in 2003, critic
Marius Chivu noted that he had enjoyed a "rapid ascent into the cultural establishment", and that he had always "ignor[ed] critical amendments (as timid as these were)". As Ștefănescu recounts, he had also perfected a special kind of self-promotion, making vague statements about the manuscripts he was preparing for print, while also reissuing his works in several new editions, which were always reviewed with the same interest by professional columnists. Most of these are seen by Voncu as genuinely good, with an "enormous capacity for expression", and without the "devouring obsession of style" that harmed Neagu's later works. The eponymous story, set during the acute drought of 1946, reports a conflict over the
Buzău waters: desperate, hungry farmers set out to hunt for millers upstream, hoping to break into their secret ponds. It shows them "hatchets raised to their chest, galloping on emaciated nags after the mirage of a silvery stream, and toward the moon itself". As she noted in 1968, "each of these novellas has enough material for a novel, and it is only a novel that could provide a frame large enough to fit Fănuș Neagu's outpouring vitality." Writing forty years later, critic Viorel Coman argued that
Caii albi was entirely eclipsed by his grown-up stories, and then forgotten by reviewers. He focused his attention of the volume as containing several masterpieces, as well as Neagu's first
alter ego; overall, he suggested that
Caii albi was similar, in both themes and overall value, to
Mihai Eminescu's late-romantic fairy tales. In September 1963,
Secolul 20 magazine featured a short story by
Pavel Spasov, translated from the Bulgarian by Neagu and Valentin Deșliu. Alongside Radu Nistor, he was working on a translation of '
Año tras año, published in 1965. He had debuted as a screenwriter in 1964, when his
Lumină de iulie was picked up by director
Gheorghe Naghi; as noted by film historian Călin Căliman, Lamotescu-Ornaru was a co-author on this project. It was an instant flop, for which Neagu and Naghi could only agree to blame each other. Filmmaker
Lucian Pintilie came to Neagu's defense, noting that his original script had been suffered "18 rewrites and transformations", which had "completely erased its realism and significance." In his own dismissive summary, Căliman recalled that
Lumină de iulie had made the Bărgan look like a "postcard". Just months after, Neagu and Velea's other script,
Niciodată singur, went into production, and Naghi was again picked as director. Taking in the criticism, he had agreed to enhance the realistic feel of this new film, mainly by closely studying both the screenplay and the Bărgan life which it depicted. It was ultimately released in 1966, as
Vremea zăpezilor ("A Time for Snows"). In 1965, According to his own recollections, he was spending that period, and overall some eight years of his life, working as an editor at
Tînărul Scriitor and its successor,
Luceafărul. His colleague for this entire interval was poet
Petru Vintilă, who also accompanied him on drinking escapades and courted the same women. On one occasion, they got bored of sifting through the 18,000 letters to the editor, which they found to be devoid of any literary value. They proceeded to burn them all, creating an incident that resulted in their salaries being halved by the magazine's head editor,
Mihu Dragomir. Poet
Gheorghe Tomozei sees this moment as inaugurating Neagu's complete break with "traditional prose", and his transition into a "distinguished poet", albeit one who never wrote actual verse. Also according to Tomozei: He brings in all sort of things that please him in 20th-century literature (the
oniric halo, the '
absurdist' phrasing), and calmly constructs that brilliant
otherness of his prose [Tomozei's emphasis]. Speaking for the openly anti-communist diaspora, Lovinescu praised the novel, alongside similar works by Preda and D. R. Popescu, for exploring at least "fragments of the real past, or of the experienced present." She notes that Neagu introduced his readers to the crimes committed on the
Danube–Black Sea Canal, to a "world of unfair denunciations and arrests", but only through "hints". According to Lovinescu, it remained an open question whether the "
chiaroscuro of such prison-themed fragments" was a negative contribution by the censors, or a choice made by the self-censoring Neagu. Neagu once reflected that censorship had been unwittingly helpful, by forcing him and his peers to go for "allegorical literature", which required of them that they "polish [their] style." In parallel, he circulated a legend according to which
Îngerul a strigat had an "uncensored" form, attacking the fundamental doctrines of the
Romanian Communist Party. Upon its publication, the work garnered accolades from the literary establishment. It received an annual USR prize, managing to upstage one of
Alexandru Ivasiuc's conventionally
Marxist novels. Neagu was the credited writer on Ion Niță's comedy film,
Zile de vară ("Summer Days"). Released in May 1968 with a cast that included
Jean Constantin, it was lambasted by Căliman as inexplicably bad, giving viewers a "feeling of shame" for having stayed through it. Barbu, who had openly acknowledged that
Principele was
intertextual, announced in April 1970 that he was suing Neagu for libel. The two parties reconciled after their case was handled by one of Bucharest's
arbitral tribunals. Overall, Neagu's accusations had failed to impress the public, who opted to endorse Barbu's methods; when Barbu was eventually exposed for more clear-cut plagiarism offenses, Neagu had become his friend, and was defending him publicly. Reflecting back on the issue in 1982, Barbu observed that: the polemic I had with Fănuș Neagu [...] only served to draw us closer, rather than set us against each other. Given his linguistic genius, he could only have loved me, but the wicked and the eunuchs were pushing him to take a bite out of me. Later, we embraced one another. Neagu's irreverent take on politics became more public during that stage of his career, especially after
Nicolae Ceaușescu had emerged as communist leader and
national president. Starting with the
July Theses of 1971,
national-communism, as a policy hinging on Ceaușescu's commands, curbed liberalization and demanded full obedience from the community of writers. As Lovinescu notes, Neagu seemed unaware of the dangers this posed, and participated in at least one squabble that seemed to facilitate Ceaușescu's designs for total control; in 1972, he and
Adrian Păunescu were bitterly fighting each other over who would take over as
Luceafăruls new editor-in-chief. A similar point is made by Deletant, who notes that Neagu's rage over the issue was politically significant: "[he] left the opposition camp and aligned himself with Eugen Barbu, one of the few supporters of [Ceaușescu's] proposals." The incident was also retold by Păunescu himself, who reported that Neagu had secured backing from
Zaharia Stancu of the USR, and was therefore illegally appointed as the second editor. He and Neagu were able to reunite as friends, but only from 1977.
Football writing and Frumoșii nebuni Neagu was by then ostensibly passionate about football, which he covered with sports editorials in literary magazines—
România Literară, and then
Luceafărul itself. Teodorescu opines instead that Neagu had secured his protection by always being biased in favor of
Dinamo, which was sponsored by the Securitate and the
state militia. According to cinematographer Dumitru Fernoagă, this was for the best, since Neagu's script was merely a collection of "idiotic jokes". supported the Securitate in its simmering conflict with
Paul Goma, who had served time in prison after the 1956 events. Also in 1972, Neagu publicly declared that Goma had no literary talent—a statement that the Securitate case officer felt compelled to regard as exaggerated. Neagu similarly served the regime's case against another writer,
Nicolae Breban, who had gone public with his critique of the July Theses. He "maligned [Breban] as having a poor grasp of the Romanian language and as a traitor of the party/motherland." Neagu's football-inspired pieces appeared as two volumes:
Cronici de carnaval ("Carnival Chronicles", 1972), and
Cronici afurisite sau Poeme cîntate aiurea ("Bastard Chronicles or Poems I Dropped Here and There", 1977); Another retrospective review was provided by Căliman, who recalled that the international press, which had seen the film played as part of the
Directors' Fortnight, rated it as the most important one coming out of Romania during the decade; Căliman also mentions that, during post-production, Gabrea had "struggled against the stiff opposition of censors". Neagu also wrote
Casa de la miezul nopții ("A Midnight Home"), filmed in 1975 by
Gheorghe Vitanidis; the author himself appeared in it as a secondary character, Taliverde. At the time, he and
Tatiana Nicolescu were collaborating on translating
Georgi Markov's epic
Sibir, which they published in two volumes (1976, 1984). inspired the central protagonist, Eduard Valdara. In some fragments, the narrative also stands as a thinly-disguised portrayal of the 1950s literary scene, as experienced directly by the author himself. was essentially
intertextual and closely mirrored
Mateiu Caragiale's classic,
Craii de Curtea-Veche—down to striving for the exact same number of pages It is described by essayist
Nicolae Steinhardt as a "radioactive" companion to Caragiale's "chemically stable" writing (or what
Ulysses is to the
Odyssey). In a 1976 chronicle, Ion Lotreanu suggests that
Frumoșii nebuni was not at all a novel, and merely had the "appearance of an epic writing." As Lotreanu puts it: A lyrical net is cast, like some sort of a trance, over the book's vaporous image. The world is seen through colored glass. Its author believes (one senses) that writing beautifully, expressively, carries more artistic weight than any commonplace epics. The same reviewer finds that the text is excessive in its metaphors, being entertaining throughout, like a "perpetual dream"; its "allusive langue" evokes 19th-century stories by
Ion Creangă, but is innovative for being adapted to a modern, urban setting, in which the heroes are "footballers, crooners, fun-seeking girls".
Frumoșii nebuni differs from
Craii in several major ways, including by making the central figures more approachable and direct. This characteristic is highlighted by Steinhardt, who describes them as "furious", "like the heroes portrayed by
John Osborne." Voncu goes further, proposing that the "anarchic" novel has a purely superficial resemblance to
Craii, and is instead based on the "more modest" works of
Ionel Teodoreanu. He sees the work as elevated by its secondary, "
dystopian", message, which ridicules communist totalitarianism and again alludes to its crimes against individual freedoms.
Cartea cu prieteni years In the mid-1970s, Neagu continued to test the regime's tolerance for dissent. He once approached
Foreign Minister George Macovescu, who had frozen permission for writers to travel abroad when one of their colleagues defected to England, if he planned on doing the same for Securitate spies, one of whom had opted to give himself up in Norway. At some point during that decade, Neagu had a chance meeting with
Géza Szőcs, the
Hungarian Romanian poet. The two got along after Szőcs confessed that Hungarians still pined for
Transylvania, allowing Neagu to view him as an "honest man." They then played a game in which Neagu would sign off Transylvanian cities to
Hungary, in exchange for shots of vodka. Onlookers thought that Neagu was being provocative, though Szőcs speculated that he was actually mocking Ceaușescu's propaganda, which had it that "in the depths of every Hungarian's soul is the cherished idea of revenge". The Securitate proposed to use both Neagu and
Mircea Dinescu for a plan to undermine Goma's credibility abroad. As argued by Voncu, in the 1980s Neagu belonged to a "grey area of literature", also populated by
Ioan Alexandru and
Constantin Noica. These authors served to legitimize a nucleus of extreme national-communists—including Barbu,
Paul Anghel and
Corneliu Vadim Tudor—and their theories about "
Protochronism". Voncu also notes that Neagu and the others were exploited by the Barbu group, but without ever joining the Protochronist caucus. In May 1980, Neagu was shortlisted for the top managerial position at
Cartea Românească publishers. This perplexed his would-be employee, Zaciu, who noted that Neagu "simply did not fit the job description", for having no university diploma to his name. At around the same time, the novelist involved himself in a publicized polemic with
Geo Bogza, the communist intellectual and former avant-garde author. Neagu and other members of Barbu's circle had been infuriated by Bogza's decision to republish one of his earlier texts, which featured his mockery of Arghezi. Neagu sought to harm his rival by republishing pornographic and rebellious, unpatriotic fragments from Bogza's youthful writings, within a lampoon in
Flacăra. Zaciu notes that the "perfidious" piece, written in such a way that Neagu could not be sued for defamation, had been personally approved by the communist potentate
Eugen Florescu, meaning that "nobody will take action [against Neagu], for fear." Over the following months, Neagu intervened in the conflict tearing apart the USR: he supported
Nicolae Dragoș, a national-communist, for the position of USR president, and, on 26 August, attended a meeting with the communist leadership. He and others among Dragoș's supporters asked Ceaușescu to impose a new USR charter, which would have brought it under the party's control. at a
Dinamo match in 1981 In 1979,
Editura Sport-Turism had published Neagu's volume of biographical profiles, as
Cartea cu prieteni ("The Book of Friends"), Micu describes this imagery as a "metaphor of illusion". Having already published Faulknerian translations before 1973, In 1986, Neagu and Puiu Brăileanu completed a version of
Pavlo Zahrebelnyi's
Acceleration (as
Vîntul de seară). In 1981, Neagu put out a collection of articles,
Insomnii de mătase ("Silken Sleeplessness"), dismissed by Voncu as a purely commercial endeavor. Another reviewer,
Nicolae Ulieru, gave
Punga an all-positive review, in particular for its "successful enlargement of the meaning one usually ascribes to the notion of
anti-fascist combatant [Ulieru's italics]". Over those months, the two screenwriters were also working with another filmmaker,
Iosif Demian, resulting in 1982's
Baloane de curcubeu ("Rainbow Balloons")—with
Dorel Vișan as the head of a
collective farm, slowly piecing together the backstory of his estranged and cheating wife. Căliman calls it "en exciting film, centered on the motley world that bridges village and city". and her descent into madness. Filmed by Ioan Cărămăzan and released in mid-1984, it was welcomed by critic Eva Sîrbu, who reserved praise for both the script and for
Ecaterina Nazare's performance in the title role. The same three-man team worked on the 1987
romance film Sania albastră ("The Blue Sled"), which reviewers of the day described as unsatisfactory. Neagu alone worked with
Geo Saizescu on the lyrical, "savory comedy" Also that year, his
Cantonul părăsit was adapted into an experimental drama film by Adrian Istrătescu Lener. A number of Neagu's travel stories appeared as
Pierdut în Balcania ("Lost in Balkan Land"); released by Editura Sport-Turism in 1982, this volume included a portrait of Neagu, by
Constantin Piliuță. In early 1985, he published a second installment of
Cartea cu prieteni. Chronicler
Radu G. Țeposu remarked its "tragic indictment" of socialist realism, but was overall unimpressed by its "metaphoric delirium", since "beautiful images are stifled by a purely decorative style." Also then, Neagu released his only volume of
lyric poetry, as
Poeme răsărite-n iarbă ("Poems Sprouting in the Grass"), In 1987, Neagu was working on a re-release of
Casa de la miezul nopții—this time as a play, commissioned to him by
Bulandra Theater—and also on
Golful de plumb ("A Gulf of Lead"), inspired by the 1970 floods, and shortlisted for production by Nottara. In 1985, Neagu hissed off the junior writer
Dorin Tudoran, who had secured a
US visa and had no intention of returning from the trip; during their exchange, he implied that Tudoran was a traitor to his country. Neagu collected his final volume of football sketches and
reportage pieces, Such incidents resulted in the Securitate taking some additional interest: from December 1986, Neagu and his former associate Dinescu were kept under special observation, being both influenced and threatened by undercover agents. During the late 1980s, the novelist was expressing support for the national-communist approach to the Hungarian minority, now seen by Ceaușescu as a privileged class that needed to be contained. During a trip to Denmark, Neagu mocked an interviewer, telling her that, had he not been a writer, he would have fancied being a Hungarian in Romania; upon returning, he recounted his "wonders and mischief" to his Romanian colleagues at
Neptun, within earshot of Ceaușescu's villa, possibly because he had "permission from above". he was made editor-in-chief of
Țara daily, which represented the
Democratic Agrarian Party (PDAR). A political column in
Orizont magazine described him as the PDAR's third most important figure, after
Victor Surdu and
David Ohanesian, also describing his
Țara editorials as primarily shielding the party from uncomfortable questions about its financing (under his watch, that newspaper eventually filed for bankruptcy). Barbu, who later established the far-right
Greater Romania Party, was expelled from the USR for both his history of plagiarism and his attacks on other writers. Neagu was vocal in opposing the move, during a heated debate which again pitted him against
Geo Bogza. As read by Ciotloș, Neagu's political journalism became "acid and unjust, but inconsistent". It was generally carried by "spontaneous" opinions or "moods", making his stances unpredictable. With time, he became "entirely cut off from current affairs, either in Romania or anywhere else", dismissing virtually all younger authors as "counter-cultural", collecting minute details about the provincial literary scene, and praising the Romanians' timeless "cultural myths" (in pages that are rated by Ciotloș as a "nadir of his writing"). In early 1992,
România Liberă daily hosted some of his op-eds, which outlined his critique of former anti-communist dissidents, including both Dinescu and journalist
Octavian Paler. The staff writers at
România Literară viewed these as embarrassing for Neagu, since he now held "the same opinions as those being launched by the Securitate." The novelist had claimed that Dinescu was subservient to his Hungarian and
Jewish in-laws, and suggested that Paler, a "spy of communism", should have been jailed. Neagu was overall a committed supporter of
Ion Iliescu, who became Romania's first post-revolutionary president. His stance alienated several of his writer friends, who found Iliescu's politics unpalatable. Such interpretations were partly confirmed by Sorescu's deputy,
Mihai Ungheanu, who confirmed that Șerban was disliked for not showcasing Romanian dramatists in a publicly-funded venue. Ungheanu added: "we expect changes from the new director, Fănuș Neagu." Ichim also noted that Neagu had a questionable reputation, making him unqualified for the job. Neagu confessed to Iacoban, who had served in a similar position at the
National Theater Iași, that he did not feel entirely adequate for this assignment. Iacoban believes that he was right: anybody could see that the new general director had no calling for this administrative post; if he lasted there for almost three years, it was only because of his intelligence. In May of that year, Neagu also announced that
Eugène Ionesco, the self-exiled Romanian playwright, had demanded to have one of his final plays staged exclusively by the TNB. Such claims were refuted by Ionesco's wife and daughter, who further accused Neagu of having circulated a forged letter. Neagu's new selection of stories,
Partida de pocher ("A Poker Game"), was printed in 1995, alongside and a final version of
Casa de la miezul nopții. Neagu himself made another appearance as an actor in the 1994 period-comedy film
Crucea de piatră (directed by
Andrei Blaier from a screenplay by
Titus Popovici); It was singled out by film columnist Valerian Sava as one of the worst cinema projects to have been financed by the Romanian state, and as "ridiculously at odds with history".
Cronica Română years During 1996, Neagu was implicated in a scandal over
Marea năpîrlire ("The Great Shedding"), a political comedy penned by
Vasile Rebreanu and staged by the
National Theater Cluj. The local press published an interview of his, which had him praising Rebreanu as a major dramatist; this was especially controversial, since
Marea năpîrlire propagandized for Iliescu's
Social Democrats, while also attacking another anti-communist,
Doina Cornea. Neagu argued that he had been misquoted. In his retraction, he depicted Rebreanu as "a lisping, tiresome [author], and moreover a servant of the now-extinct
Ceaușescu family." He himself was ultimately forced out of the TNB by a new Minister of Culture, Caramitru, who represented the center-right
Democratic Convention. Dismissing Caramitru as a mere actor who belonged "on the plank of stages or the plank that one walks on at the very end", he refused to hand in his resignation, and remained in office until May 1997, when Caramitru organized a competition for the post. Neagu declined to participate, but also stepped down voluntarily. That year, his final volume of short prose appeared as
O corabie spre Bethleem ("A Ship to Bethlehem"), under contract with Cartea Românească. He continued to serve in a similar position at
Literatorul, registering the brand with Floarea Albastră publishers. This pitted him against the USR, which regarded
Literatorul as its own publication. In February 1998, the Union declared his position vacant, and organized a competition to fill it; Neagu, backed by his editorial staff, implied that the move was illegal, and refused to either step down or present himself in the contest. He was a guest panelist at other newspapers, including
Jurnalul Național. In January 2000, the latter hosted his article on the Hungarian–Romanian disputes in
Harghita and
Covasna—it was criticized by Covasna's Romanians because Neagu had failed to fully research the story, and had mistaken a Hungarian official for a Romanian one. In February 2001,
Horia Alexandrescu gave up his position as managerial director of
Cronica Română daily, and Neagu took over (heading an editorial team that also included Voncu,
Aristide Buhoiu, and
George Cușnarencu). Though styling itself an "independent publication", it was largely supportive of the Social Democratic establishment. Neagu had lost his position at
Literatorul in June 2000: he had withdrawn his complaint against his ministry-appointed replacement
Gheorghe Grigurcu, but at a time when the magazine had suspended publication and was verging on bankruptcy. Controversy was stirred again in October 2001, when writer
Costi Rogozanu discovered that
Literatorul, which he identified as Neagu's publication, was receiving the largest subsidies afforded by the Ministry of Culture—which was being directed by
Răzvan Theodorescu, a Social Democrat. With Neagu approaching the end of his career, various young colleagues had begun disputing his abilities and status. Within this generation, Pârvulescu revisited
Îngerul a strigat as a novel of "questionable taste", bordering on "kitsch" In 2003, he and Blaier granted funds to Gheorghe Preda's project,
Îngerul necesar, which sought to restore the standards of communist-era dramas, as an explicit alternative to the New Wave. Neagu attacked Marcu as "that insane woman" during an interview in
Luceafărul. Literary columnist
Dan C. Mihăilescu observed from the side that the objectors were publicity seekers, who aimed at marginalizing Neagu's position within the national canon. However, he also found Neagu's replies to Marcu as belonging to a disgraceful tradition of lampoons, "mixing paper in with manure". In 2002, he published another one of his own novels,
Amantul doamnei Dracula ("Mrs Dracula's Lover"). The narrative is essentially a posthumous libel against
Elena Ceaușescu, disguised under the name of "Dia Goia". She is shown in decrepit old age, having lost all self-control—spewing
profanities with virtually each sentence she produces, passing gas in front of anyone present, and recounting her lifelong sexual debauchery. In October 2004, he was made an honorary citizen of Craiova, and attended the inauguration of a Fănuș Neagu Primary School in
Caraula. The latter institution also hosts his bust, done by Lucian Irimescu. In early 2008, Neagu, who had developed
gout and was taking
allopurinol, Around the same time, the novelist was diagnosed with
prostate cancer, stood by his body as it was
laid in state at the USR house on
Calea Victoriei. In addition, the writer was survived by his sister (who had relocated to
Piatra Neamț), and by several nieces, all of whom still resided in his home village; Grădiștea sent two busloads of mourners for his funeral. The memorial house was ultimately opened for the public in July 2011. A second part of
Jurnal cu fața ascunsă appeared posthumously, in 2014, care of the
Museum of Romanian Literature. ==Legacy==