A Few Words About the Author
Igor Bergler was born on September 21, 1970 and spent his childhood in Timişoara, a city in western Romania. He graduated from C.D, Loga High School, the city’s the best lycée back then. He grew up, as he owns, in a huge family exposed to the various preoccupations of his relatives on both sides and continues to maintain close family ties. He not only inherited all their interests, he was practically born polyglot because (thanks to Timişoara’s geographic position) his united family spoke many languages. He now speaks five fluently and gets by in five more. Bergler started going to college in the last year of Communism (1989) at Timişoara Polytechnic, but the revolution freed him from a profession that bored him and opened a path toward cinematography, his long-time dream. He studied film direction, script writing and film theory in Bucharest then pursued directing and television studies in Berlin, where he further specialized in electoral campaign technique, political marketing and management, for which he received a doctorate in Electoral Campaign Management. Desperately interested in everything around him, in his student days he numbered narratology and semiotics among his passions where they rank to this day. He grew up in a house with a huge library, and he owes his education to his mother and two the three aunts who raised him along with her and without whose support he would never have accomplished all he has managed to achieve. The Lost Bible is dedicated to these aunts.
Like his character Charles Baker, Bergler has done many things in various fields, either because he gets bored very quickly or because he’s “greedy for knowledge.” He was, for instance, part of the extraordinary team that gave Romania ProCinema, the country’s best post-revolutionary cinema magazine, for which he wrote dozens of articles and film reviews. A short time after his departure for Berlin, the magazine folded. Bergler says that’s just a coincidence. Be that as it may, in Timişoara he acted as executive director of what the press called “the best local television station in Romania,” Analog TV, and for a short period he oversaw Analog’s radio stations in Timişoara, Caransebeş şi Lugoj. And the list goes on.
For Analog, he created and moderated a famous cultural television program, “The Fifth Wheel,” featuring guests from across the cultural spectrum.
Post television, he built and ran two of the most interesting mid-sized independent publicity and marketing agencies in Romania. He created and promoted famous brands. Some of these are now national and regional leaders in their categories.
To mention one of his many many “firsts”: among the 12 films he wrote and directed, the two full-length features are the first films produced in Romania by independent television, and, as noted in the press of the time, they are the first Romanian thrillers.
Forever restless, agitated and in a state of continuous search, he possesses the largest private film-library in Romania: over 8,000 copies, all bought and paid for because, for him intellectual theft is a terrible turn off. His library of books is extensive as well. Hugely energetic, he has conducted electoral campaigns, taught for years at the University of Timişoara, and travelled the world.
He’s crazy about the soccer team Juventus Torino, his wife’s brand of hair accessories, TIE-ME-UP, any small round animal with fur.
He says that in the course of writing he reads his novels to his cat, Ferdinand, and can tell from the tone of the meows whether he has to change something or not.
The Lost Bible is the first book in the Charles Baker series. Lincoln’s Best Kept Secret and Richard the Third’s Lost Hunch are forthcoming. A Rather Nasty Combination and Perplexity, both novels, are also in the works.
He has a wonderful wife and loads of friends, true friends among them.
I tried to get Bergler to answer Proust’s famous questionnaire, but I failed miserably, so I asked him a few stupid cub reporter questions, like “Since you’re still passionate about history, who are your favorite historic personalities? Answer: Diogenes and Charlie Chaplin. As for his favorite books, there were just too many. When challenged to name at least two of three, he came out with Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Fuentes Terra Nostra. He immediately added, “There has to be something by Borges and Danilo Kiss.” So who was his favorite intellectual? Umberto Eco. The film question was harder, but after we’d dealt with Zoro (with Alain Delon in the title roll, the film of his childhood), I managed to get Inquiry into a Citizen Above Suspicion by Elio Petri, Kaos by the Taviani Brothers and Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. After that, as if he regretted having to choose, he ran breathlessly through a heap of titles and auteurs: Kusturica, Kurosawa, Fellini and other’s I’ve forgotten. Then he told me to take a hike.