Distinguised Professor Publishes 40th Translation

Adam J. Sorkin, Distinguished Professor of English at Penn State Brandywine, recently published an English translation of No Way Out of Hadesburg and Other Poems by Ioan Es. Pop. The book was published by the University of Plymouth Press in England in late 2010.

A multi-award winning, critically acclaimed author, Pop created this book of poetry inspired by his hardships and experiences as a teacher in an isolated village in northern Romania and later as a laborer in Bucharest in communist Romania in the 1980s.

Books such as Pop's represent the attempt of Romanian writers to reach a new understanding of the circumstances and psychology of their lives during a period of repression and scarcity. Published in 1994, four years after the revolution, the poems reconstruct at the recent past in a metaphorical, mythical perspective. 

Sorkin's translation was made jointly with Lidia Vianu, professor at the University of Bucharest. Their collaboration previously brought three other books of important Romanian poetry to the attention of the English-speaking world.

No Way Out of Hadesburg is Sorkin's fortieth book of translated contemporary Romanian literature. The series in which it appears was chosen by a board of expert Romanian critics and writers and sponsored by the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest.