Adela

At a mountain resort, a refined intellectual runs into his former pupil, now a beautiful woman half his age. As the nature of their rekindled relationship changes, he documents with perverse lucidity his attempt to resist falling in love with her.

Adela is a fin de si cle novel written by Garabet Ibrăileanu, one of Romania's most important literary critics. The author spent a decade refining and circulating the work among his literary friends, finally publishing it a year before his death (1933). It received the National Novel Award that same year.

A sharp analysis of male prudeness and idealism.
--George Calinescu, critic

One of the most beautiful and enduring specimens of the Romanian analytical novel.
--Eugenia Tudor-Anton, writer

A painful, full of doubts midlife crisis of an overcomplicated man. Courageous book for its time, deprecated (but nevertheless delightful) by today's standards. --George Cocu, reviewer

A model of psychological literature imbued with genuine poetry.
--Eugen Lovinescu, critic