The 1989 overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu revealed to the world a regime whose grim despotism was so powerful and pervasive that it almost defies comprehension. For Norman Manea, a Holocaust survivor who left Romania in 1986, the terror imposed on its citizens was matched by the choices it forced upon its artists. In the essays here, Manea catalogs what the artist must rely on to survive under such circumstances: the disguise of the buffoon, an aesthetic inseparable from ethics, a hatred of mediocrity, and, whenever the opportunity arises, a healthy raspberry to the dictator.