Alistair Ian Blyth: Translating Post-Soviet Moldova

Auntie Frosea is a retiree in the capital city of Chișinău, Moldova, during the late 1980s. While lugging grocery bags full of squash and potatoes back to her dowdy apartment and angry husband, she passes a billboard that reads, “Perestroika! Glasnost! Democratization!” Gorbachev is in power, and another woman Frosea talks to, a former soldier, believes he is an agent of the United States. Her only escape from the bleak gray days is a Brazilian soap opera called When Auntie Frosea compares her life to Isaura’s, she realizes she cannot complain, but further thinking about the differences between her reality and the Brazilian girl’s life causes her to emotionally spiral: “There was, it’s true, one minor problem: the seemingly never-ending soap operas would occasionally come to a real conclusion, and for a few days Auntie Frosea would feel adrift. But a new serial would always begin in time and Auntie Frosea would recover her spirits and her optimism. Everything was fine!” It’s