Translated from the best selling Romanian edition, Flying against the Arrow, this quasi-autobiographical book describes the life of an intellectual living under extreme political conditions, paying particular attention to the 'unbearable 80s'. The book vividly portrays the difficulties encountered by a young intellectual trying to shape himself under the oppressive Ceausescu regime and provides a stark depiction of a man's intellectual suffocation under hard-line socialist rule. The book's overall significance is therefore far more wideranging than just Romania or the 1980s.