The Old Man and the Bureaucrats Author:Mircea Eliade This novel by the distinguished religious scholar Mircea Eliade, a satire of the Romanian Communist police state, has been called A Thousand and One Nights as if written by Kafka. It is the story of a retired schoolteacher, Farama, trying to trace the subsequent career of one of his pupils. The old man soon attracts the attention of the governme... more »nt and is detained for questioning. He proves to be an indefatigable storyteller as he recalls the details of the fantastic and miraculous adventures that befell his students, and the officials begin to fall under the spell of his tales. Finally, a new set of bureaucrats - ideological analysts - are brought in to confront Farama with their own political and economic interpretations of his story.« less