Born in 1922, a distant relative to Tudor Musatescu, the much better known drama author, Vlad Musatescu became one of the most popular Romanian authors of the last century, and although his main books were, in the end, parodies of the policier genre, they were read by thousands and became instant successes. For the strength of Vlad Musatescu as a writer - he was also a translator, a journalist, a printer - was in his humour and the way he created several characters that are still remembered fondly by several generations of readers. But also as a heavy eater, with a sweet tooth for traditional Romanian food, a traveller, one who likes crime novels, admired Arthur Conan Doylle - hence his main character's name, Al Conan Doi - Al Conan the Second - a fat, lively, inteligent and chaotic character. He also launched other major characters in his books : his aunt, Ralita, an older and out of quack lady, heavy smoker, eater and also obsessed by crime novels ; his three nephews, Biba, Babane and Babacu ; his wife Penke "the Bulgarian" ; his car, Bombita "the Little Bomb", a small Fiat engine ; his dog, Falconetti ; and others, and others.
He was born of the 4th of May 1922 in Pitesti, where he would grow up, in a large and rather original family, which will inspire most of his later characters and will also cause him to put together several phantastic volumes of memories. With sligh exagerations, of course. In 1936 he tried to flee to Abisinia, under the influence of his adventure novels, but was caught and moved to a military school. For the rest of his school years, the future writer was a problem-pupil. He wrote surrealistic poetry, began smoking, he read every waking moment, mixing Dostoievski and the Adventures of Tarzan, wanted to be an adventurer, a writer, a publisher. He would finish highschool being moved from city to city - for a while he was even enrolled at the Jewish Highschool "Culture - Max Aziel" in Bucharest - and in 1940 he began working as a corector for several magazines in the country's capital. He would keep working for journals and magazines for the rest of his life, mostly as a technical adviser, but also as a reporter and translator.
His main passion was literature, aside from his first love, poetry. Surrealistic poetry. As a publisher/ writer he launched several books for children in the 1940's and in 1945 he published his first novel, "La sud de lacul Nairobi", with a surprising success. For a while he was the director of Europolis, a Communist publishing house, got married and kept on writing. At the same time his weight problems began to appear and despite his hardest efforts and regimes - often broken with heavy meals - he would for the rest of his life be overweight.
Vlad Musatescu published four novels, which made the series "Jocurile detectivului Conan / The Games of Detective Conan", in which an alter-ego, Al Conan Doi, a fat, lively, funny and often looking for trouble journalist, writer and amateur detective couldn't help but get into all sorts of trouble. With the help of his three nephews - Biba, Babane, Babacu - and his aunt Ralita, this crazy detective got into all sorts of trouble and always ended up making things much worse than before. These four novels, bearing as titles the names of favourite kids' games, such as hide and go seek, were very successful. And although they weren't actually meant for kids, the children read them and loved them.
He would continue writing and publishing until the rest of his life, spending most of his time at a small house in Tancabesti, a micro-farm, as he called it, where he used to retreat from the noise and agitation of the city. This farm would be later destroyed in 1984, being demolished due to the insane sistematisation project of the Ceausescu regime. Vlad Musatescu also published several volumes of memoirs, in the same style, called "Aventuri aproximative", maybe not as succesfull as the Al Conan Doi series, some books for children and translations.
This great writer passed away on March 4th 1999, leaving behind a large body of work, that should once again be published. And it seems this will happen shortly, as the newspaper Adevarul will publish a luxury edition of Vlad Musatescu's writings. Sort of a complete works, in deluxe conditions, soon to be edited on the market. A worthy tribute for a great artist.
August 2008
