Stefan Popa's new novel: an exciting and tasty dish

In his new, fifth novel, writer Stefan Popa (1989) returns to Romania, which previously served as the setting for his debut novel Vanished Borders. The novel's protagonist is a 'half-breed', just like the writer, but the other way round. While Popa, is a son of a Dutch mother and Romanian father, protagonist Alex Petrescu, on the contrary, has a Romanian mother and a Dutch, non-biological father.

Chef

Alex is a chef who has created a furore on television. But his existence is called into question when his girlfriend tells him she is pregnant, while he is sure he does not want children AND it cannot be his. When he also slips up during a TV recording, he decides on a whim to leave the Netherlands and buys a run-down estate in Romania for a pittance.

Of the four ancient oaks that once guarded the site, only one remains standing. Every year in Romania, 38 million cubic metres of forest are cut down by the 'wood mafia', as many cubic metres as blood flows through all the billions of people combined, Alex figures. That is why he is starting a campaign to plant trees to stop deforestation. A noble endeavour, but the meddling of this half-Romanian outsider is not appreciated by everyone in the village.

And then he also gets his hands on the secret state file of his mother, who once fled communist Romania because she was pregnant, but later ended her life in the Netherlands.

Neither meat nor fish

All this forces Alex to face his past and future. Once there was a time 'when the Eastern Bloc man was a fellow human being' - a deliciously vicious line from Popa. But Alex, who grew up 'like the accident I was', feels he does not belong anywhere. In the Netherlands he was never a full-fledged Dutchman, in Romania he is not a real Romanian. He is neither flesh nor fish.

In the Shadow of the Oak is a sensory story about identity, origins and (dis)rooting, in both figurative and literal terms. Like chef Alex, Stefan Popa knows how to use his ingredients: a handful of characterful characters, a pinch of dark mystery, spiced up considerably with well-chosen metaphors. The result is an engaging, layered and cleverly written novel.