By VALER POPA

An excerpt from Moon Over Bucharest, a finalist for the 2026 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

He was led by the apostle into a valley shut in between two hills, where everything that is lost on earth (be the fault of ours or that of time or fate) fetches up miraculously

— Ludovico Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, Canto 34)

Of course, the Favorit Cinema was closed. It had kept mute vigil behind our building for nearly thirty years—ever since some overzealous tycoon bought it shortly after the revolution, hoping to turn the place into a nightclub; ever since he went bankrupt, fired the staff, and locked the doors with a chain so massive and medieval that even now, people often wonder how such a bulky thing could still be manufactured.