PLANET NEW YORK

About the Book

Inspired from true events, this story of love and immigration covers six-and-a-half critical weeks in the lives of Lydia and Nicki.  It is in the late seventies.  The protagonists, a young and articulate Romanian couple, arrive in New York City.  Over the course of the story they adapt and mature.  They strengthen their relationship and define their feelings towards their yet unborn child, towards their parents, friends, culture shock, and even God.

In the first half of the novel, present time chapters alternate with flashbacks.  Like the small colorful stones of a mosaic, aspects of life in Communist Romania under dictator Ceausescu provide the reader with the necessary background to understand the characters of the novel and their choices.  We witness the ritual of marriage and love without contraceptives, the dreariness of the day-to-day material existence, and the difficulties and even dangers of pursuing emigration.  Nicki’s strong-minded and career-oriented father stands in sharp contrast to his loving and soft-spoken mother, and to Lydia’s somber father, a Holocaust survivor.  A colorful family priest is instrumental in getting the young couple a pass to the New World.  We follow Lydia and Nicki on their passage from Bucharest, through Israel and Greece, to New York.

The second half of the novel tells the story of their life in the City.  Lydia and Nicki reunite with old acquaintances.  They get over a disappointing and frightening meeting with their sponsor and discover he will not be of any help to them.   They experience their first American mall, their first hot dog stand, their first pornographic magazine.  Things that we take for granted, like a ride in an air-conditioned car or in a comfortable bus that looks like an airplane, are exciting to them.  A flight in a private plane makes Nicki feel nostalgia and unwarranted pride.  They find jobs, rent an apartment, purchase a car.  They do it with the help of others, generous people who help without ulterior motive, out of the goodness of their heart.  The strong bond between Nicki and Lydia is different from those of their old-new friends, Peter and Dante.  Peter is a warm-hearted pathetic liar; Dante a good man with no common sense.  They are both involved in relationships that do not survive.  Iris, Dante’s mother, welcomes them like family, and Geppetto, an endearing middle-aged man shares his experience as an Italian-American.  Nicki is haunted by the memory of a conflict with his father over his desire to leave Romania.  Lydia finds out she is pregnant.  Nicki experiences an array of contradictory feelings towards fatherhood: fear, responsibility, desire for unlimited freedom in the new country, and the need to give it up in order to raise his child.  

Defying convention, this story is not one of destitute poverty on the brink of humanity, but of success, in a world populated by colorful and mostly generous people.

About the Author

Tudor Alexander came to the United States in 1977 as a political refugee from Communist Romania. Born in Bucharest in 1950, he writes today in both Romanian and English. Most of his characters are modeled after immigrants trying to adapt to their new surroundings. His first novel, “The Runners,” was published in Romania in 1994. His second literary work, “Smoke,” a 100-page novella, appeared in Romania in 1997. “Planet New York” was written in English in 1999. Tudor Alexander lives in Columbia, Maryland, with his wife and two children.