A rich, layered narrative that explores the indomitable human spirit against the backdrop of Romania’s complex history in the 1950s and ’60s.

A rural area not far from the city of Cluj-Napoca, a former Hungarian province that has been part of Romania since 1920. World War II has ended and the region is under the firm clasp of Stalinist collectivization. In the atmospheric village of Kolozsvár, Omertà unfolds a riveting tale through four poignant perspectives, each peeling back the layers of its central characters’ lives against the backdrop of a tumultuous Eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth century.

Kali, a peasant woman, escapes an abusive marriage to embark on a transformative journey to Kolozsvár, seeking refuge and purpose. She is employed as a maid by Vilmos, a reluctant Communist Party member with an unwavering dedication to his garden. As Vilmos’s botanical brilliance attracts the state’s attention, a clash between personal desires and political obligations ensues. Annush, the third narrator, a lovestruck teenager, becomes entangled in a complex web of emotions, grappling with love, loss, and the evolving landscape of her homeland. The tale deepens with Eleonora, who, seeking solace in a monastery, becomes a casualty of political purges and the suppression of religious faith under Romania’s oppressive regime.

In this epic novel, Romanian-born Hungarian author Andrea Tompa skillfully intertwines these tales, shedding light on the injustices and corruption of a regime that sought to extinguish cultural identities. The lives of Kali, Vilmos, Annush, and Eleonora weave a tapestry of love, resilience, the virtue of roses, and the quiet strength required to endure in the face of political turmoil.

This book is about postcolonial memory in the Netherlands. This term refers to conflicts in contemporary society about how the colonial past should be remembered. The question is often: who has the right or ability to tell their stories and who do not? In other words: who has a voice, and who is silenced? As such, these conflicts represent a wider tendency in cultural theory and activism to use voice as a metaphor for empowerment and silence as voice’s negative counterpart, signifying powerlessness. And yet, there are voices that do not liberate us from, but rather subject us to power. Meanwhile, silence can be powerful: it can protect, disrupt and reconfigure. Throughout this book, it will become clear how voice and silence function not as each other’s opposites, but as each other’s continuation, and that postcolonial memory is articulated through the interplay of meaningful voices and meaningful silences.