October, Eight O'clock

"Time itself had sickened, and we belonged to it." With these words, Norman Manea introduces the reader to a world that has been torn apart by hatred and strife, a world in which everything has lost its meaning and every human bond has been severed. Out of this chaos, however, comes occasional redemption: inklings of hope, gestures of defiance, moments of moral and artistic epiphany. No reader will forget the image, in "Proust's Tea," of the little family huddled around.