Through a Reader Looking Glass. Olivia Manning’s the Balkan Trilogy

The paper explores the way in which Romanian readers, experts in literary studies, react to how Romania, Romanians are perceived by British foreigners travelling to Romania for the first time as instantiated in Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy. The trilogy is based on the author’s experience of living in Bucharest during WW II as wife of a British Council officer. The theoretical frame underpinning the study draws on reader-oriented theory and the role of stereotypes which are viewed as culturally and historically rooted.