The short-sighted adolescent is a poor schoolboy who is in love with literature, and tries to emulate the lives and works of the writers he most admires. He is also fascinated by science and history, and stays up all night reading. At the age of 17 he decides to write a novel to prove to his teachers that he is not as mediocre as his fellow pupils, and is prepared to give up everything in order to do so. The novel is written in a series of notebooks - the 'diary' of the title - but instead of achieving fame as an author, the myopic protagonist fails his exams and has to repeat the school year.
From the perspective of a schoolboy's diary of everyday life in Bucharest in the early 20th century, - his teachers, his classmates' academic and amorous rivalries, his first sexual experiences - we are introduced to the themes of religion, self-knowledge, erotic sensibility, artistic creation and otherness, subjects that would preoccupy Mircea Eliade, one of Romania's most prominent intellectuals, until the end of his life. Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a Romanian-born historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, professor at the University of Chicago, and one of the pre-eminent interpreters of world religion of the 20th century. Eliade was an intensely prolific author of fiction and non-fiction alike, publishing over 1,300 pieces over 60 years, including the novels Maitreyi (or Bengal Nights), Noaptea de Sânziene (The Forbidden Forest), Isabel și apele diavolului (Isabel and the Devil's Waters) and Romanul Adolescentului Miop (Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent), and the novellas Domnișoara Christina (Miss Christina) and Tinerețe fără tinerețe (Youth Without Youth), which was made into a feature film by Frances Ford Coppola in 2007, starring Tim Roth.