Partida de Mah-Jong a Împăratului

Aurora Dumitrescu surprises us, and this time, by offering us, as a translator from French, the novel "Partida de Mah-Jong a Împaratului", by Adam Katzmann, a real challenge for the Romanian prose reader. The subject, exotic, confronts in an indeterminate time from the era of the Chinese Middle Empire four characters, called to dispute the succession to the throne left vacant by the death of the prestigious holder: an authoritarian and brutal military man who won his laurels on the battlefield, a banker, the richest man in the Empire, an aristocrat of princely rank from a northern province and a mandarin, a dignitary at the imperial court, a refined man of letters, who will also add to his role as story teller. The short action is consumed in a single night, in which the protagonists must prove their vocation to govern by ensuring the stability and good order of the state, facing each other, according to an old tradition, in a game of Mah-Jong, a secret game reserved for the Imperial Court. The confrontation of the specific skills of each of the competitors, according to their field of performance and personal traits, takes on the meaning of an exciting and revealing parable, which the author himself summarizes in a short but pertinent Warning: "The meaning of history and the key to the political game are summarized in a realistic, simple and complete manner in this manual of gaining power." The "Emperor's Mah-Jong Game" has the tension of a battle, the collision between life and death proving to be the very "Rule of the Game" by which Power is won. It is the translator's merit to capture the intense but subtle tension of one of humanity's deepest vital impulses and, therefore, always current. Nicolae Marinescu