Undoubtedly, "The Revolution WILL be televised" was the main players' motto. Most Romanians only saw their revolution on their small black and white televisions while others were the actors, willing and uninformed. Young draftees, sacrificied to put on a show to fool a deceived population into believing terrorists were responsible. The "Pigs' Slaughter" is the story of how the events during the run-up to Christmas Day 1989 changed a family and nation forever. It skillfully reveals how beneath the drunken joy of the Romanian Revolution lies the true story of the deception of a nation and the world. The story is told from the point of view of a 14 year old boy in a small Transylvanian town, destined to become a journalist and learn the inside stories, whose hindsight and flashforwards reveal to the reader the truth, of which most of the story's protagonists are painfully unaware. In a story that seamlessly weaves in relevant references to World War One and Two, the French Revolution, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and even Vlad the Impaler (the inspiration for Dracula's character), is revealed an inside description of how the Eastern Block, locked behind the Iron Curtain, was finally dismantled. The Revolution ruthlessly took more than it gave - beautiful bodies, healthy food, cultivated culture, tested tradition. In the end, communism's empty materialism was simply traded for western society's empty materialism, which happily did away with what the Eastern Block years had inefficiently leftover. The boy's family and country's traditions died with his grandparents and the arrival of the morally and culturally bankrupt influence of Western society. The hungry people of before 1989 have been transformed into obese people. Instead of queuing for meagrely rationed bread they now queue to buy imported foods in overpriced hypermarkets. Particularly relevant to Westerners who grew up after their own traditional cultures were overtaken by the modern "developed" world, is the invaluable insight provided by a first-hand experience that knows both sides of that transition, how it was done and, most importantly, it's consequences. Reading this book will not only tell you more about Romania but also about your own country, culture and identity - why and how the traditions died. It's time the world heard this true story of Romania's Revolution, because most Romanians took only a couple of years to realize how little western culture had to offer.
Pacific Book Review:
"The Pig‘s Slaughter reveals history in a truly unique way. Unforgettable in its realism and humanism, this book will be etched indelibly into your memory and pondered often when some of the circumstances of history are brought to mind. Florin Grancea gives us all a gift with his fine work, as his book is destined to seek critical acclaim and many reader accolades (...)
One could sense English is not Florin Grancea’s native language as his well written first person autobiographical narrative takes the reader deep into the historical Communist mindset in The Pigs’ Slaughter. Grancea uses many short sentences, mostly factual statements without embellished adjectives; nothing more - nothing less than necessary, analogous to the subsistence of the Romanian population back in the latter part of the 1900’s".
