In this interview of Norman Manea by Hannes Stein—the German writer and journalist from Die Welt—Manea reflects on his life and work, the Holocaust, Communism and exile, literature and identity. The lucky reader becomes witness to these various and fascinating discussions: spiritual formation and deformation, censorship and creativity, America and Europe, Israel and anti-Semitism, mass-media, the Nobel Prize, culture and mercantilism in our dangerously polluted global environment. Among these pages, it’s not by chance that we encounter Stalin and Ceausescu, Proust and Nabokov, Kafka and Roth, as well as Manea’s literary compatriots: Celan and Cioran, Fondane and Eliade.