Living Tissue
SynopsisPlot
With each chapter embodying a separate Commandment, Living Tissue, 10x10 is both a Decalogue and a ribald, exuberant, deliriously inventive postmodern Decameron, which covers four decades in the life of the protagonist, unfolding against the backdrop of Soviet and post-communist Moldova, from the untimely death of Yuri Gagarin in 1968 to the so-called twitter revolution of 2009. Tens of tragical, comical, fantastical, historical tales intertwine, punctuated by the endless upheavals suffered by twentieth-century Moldova. But the narrative also takes euphoric flight, in episodes that travel as far afield as Paris, Moscow, and Tibet.
Story
About this book
Living Tissue, 10x10 is a novel by Moldovan writer Emilian Galaicu-Paun, structured around the Ten Commandments. Each chapter corresponds to a single Commandment, forming a framework that holds together dozens of interconnected stories spanning four decades. The narrative follows its protagonist from 1968, the year Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin died in a training flight accident, through to the 2009 protests in Moldova that became known informally as the twitter revolution.
The book is set largely in Moldova during and after the Soviet period, a stretch of history marked by repeated political upheaval. Galaicu-Paun uses this backdrop to move between tones and registers freely. Some episodes are historical, others fantastical or comic, and the novel shifts between them without settling into any single mode. Locations extend well beyond Moldova itself, with scenes set in Paris, Moscow, and Tibet among other places.
The structure recalls the Decameron in its accumulation of varied tales within a governing frame, though here the frame is theological rather than narrative. Galaicu-Paun is also known as a poet, and the novel reflects an interest in bending conventional boundaries between the real and the invented, treating form as something to be folded and reshaped rather than followed.
