Youth Without Youth

A fascinatingly unclassifiable novel of survival, the surreal, and the supernatural in the shadow of World War II Bucharest, 1938: while Hitler gains power in Germany, the Romanian police start arresting students they suspect of belonging to the Iron Guard. Meanwhile, a man who has spent his life studying languages, poetry, and history--a man who thought his life was over--lies in a hospital bed, inexplicably alive and miraculously healthy, trying to figure out how to conceal his identity. At the intersection of the natural and supernatural, myth and history, dream and science, lies Mircea Eliade's novella. The psychological thriller features Dominic Matei, an elderly academic who experiences a cataclysmic event that allows him to live a new life with startling intellectual capacity. Sought by the Nazis for their medical experiments on the potentially life-prolonging power of electric shocks, Matei is helped to flee through Romania, Switzerland, Malta and India. Newly endowed with...

The cheapest new copy of Youth Without Youth is €15.30 at Mondadori Store. Prices checked 6 Nov 2026

More by Mircea Eliade