The Metaphor of Trauma. Picioare de lotus (Lotus Feet) by Bogdan Răileanu

The metaphor of trauma began to be more and more present in Romanian literature, especially after 1990, when writers found a perennial ground in the impact that the totalitarian regime had on Romanian society. Trauma is also the subject of the new short story volume by Bogdan Răileanu, Picioare de lotus (Lotus Feet), published in 2024, by Polirom Publishing House, but what is different from its representations so far is Răileanu’s refusal to relate directly to the Romanian postDecembrist landscape. The author seems to have stepped out of the post-Decembrist ”net”, exploring a space which, at first glance, is not at all attractive – the space of the small, everyday reality, which lacks the sensational. Thus, the stories in his volume function as an exhibition of traumas and prejudices that work all together in banal situations, changing the quality of life of the individual.