The Forest of the Hanged

Apostol Bologa, a Romanian officer in the Austro-Hungarian army of the First World War, sits on the court-martial that hangs a Czech deserter, and is then ordered to the Transylvanian front to fight against his fellow Romanians, until conscience and divided loyalty tear him apart. Rebreanu sets it between the far Galician front where the hangings begin and Bologa's Transylvanian homeland: his home village near Năsăud, the border front against Romania, and the forest where he too will hang.

Apostol Bologa

The Galician front (the hanging)

Part 1

On the Galician front, the zealous young officer Apostol Bologa helps condemn a Czech lieutenant to death for trying to desert to the enemy, and watches him hang with approval. The execution, and the field of gallows the book's title evokes, plants the first seed of the doubt that will consume him.

Part 1

inspired by The book opens on the Eastern Front in Galicia, where Bologa sits on a court-martial that hangs a Czech officer for desertion; the front is real, the exact wood the novel's own, sited far north of Transylvania.

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