The Valley of Youth

“Valley of Youth” is a short autobiographical novel in which Eugène—a Swiss writer and screenwriter of Romanian origin—tells, with extraordinary sincerity and humor, about his childhood and youth.

It is a novel about growing up, about childhood and youth of the writer, where the starting point is made up of the most varied things that became for the author sources of happiness or sorrow. It was published in 2007 and staged the following year by Swiss director Christian Denizard.

“Valley of Youth” could be compared to Sergey Dovlatov’s “The Suitcase,” in which the author-hero, through objects that ended up in emigrant luggage, sums up a certain stretch of his adult life. “Valley of Youth” is about the “suitcase” that the author carries into maturity—and that will stay with him for the rest of his life.

Through the objects you’ll learn about the fate of a little boy, the son of political refugees from Bucharest, who, in the 1970s, arrived in Switzerland at the age of six and, despite a cultural shock, found a calling in the profession of writer. Tender, funny, and sometimes tragic episodes from his life let us see Switzerland with other, stereotype-free eyes.

“Here is my story of youth in twenty objects: ten that made me feel good and ten others that made me feel bad. A boot, a Romanian primer, and a moped will tell about me better than I could myself.”

Eugène Melts (pseudonym Eugène) was born in Bucharest in 1969. In 1975 his family emigrated to Switzerland, where he lives and works today. He wrote song lyrics, worked as a chronicler for a newspaper and radio, writes for theater, and also writes stories and other literary texts.

For “Valley of Youth,” Eugène was awarded a listeners’ prize from Franco-language radio in Switzerland and the “Literature of Borders” award of the Franco-Swiss association. In 2000–2002 he headed the Swiss Society of Writers.

Eugène Melts—known simply as Eugène—was born in 1969 in Bucharest, Romania. His family moved to Lausanne when he was six years old. He began his writing career with song lyrics for the rock group “Sakharyny” and with a column in various newspapers. He wrote two story collections—“Fifteen Meters of Glory,” “Can Opener”—but also a story about loss of memory titled “My Name” (ed. “l’Aire”) and “Pamukale, a fairy-tale land: a real guide to an unreal land” (ed. “Autrement”). In 2007, for young readers, he wrote “Valley of Youth” (ed. “La Joie de lire”) and won the listeners’ prize of Swiss radio (Prix des auditeurs de la Radio Suisse romande). Each chapter tells us about an object that influenced the author and recounts the story of Eugène—from his life under Ceaușescu’s Romania to life in Switzerland. From these stories about his childhood, he created a play performed in schools and libraries. Together with his Russian wife Alexandra Kaurkova, he wrote in 2003 the book “Behind the Facades of Saint Petersburg, 18 Encounters in Courtyards.” He teaches Swiss literature at an institute in Biel.

Growing up in Switzerland in the family of emigrants from socialist Romania, the author of “Valley of Youth” is of origin both from dusty Bucharest of Ceaușescu’s era—with its queues and the ever-present public involvement—and from the university, individualist, and starchy Lausanne, one of the cultural centers of stable Switzerland in the 70s and 80s, where he would mature in a multi-story building with a view of Georges Simenon’s villa, dream about a scooter, and be crazy about Star Wars… This involvement in both cultures gives Eugène the ability to look at both countries—and also at himself as he grows—almost from a slightly detached distance, with soft irony and the particular wisdom characteristic of emigrant writers, even if they emigrated in early childhood—and even if they left with the patronizing understanding of someone who arrived later.