Blecher, Max: - Max Blecher (1909-38) was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Botoşani, Romania. Diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis at the age of 19, he spent six years in various sanatoria, before returning to his hometown and beginning to publish in modernist magazines and journals. Often described as "hallucinatory" and "nightmarish," Blecher's writing is a kindred spirit to Surrealism and a major contribution to the 20th-century European avant-garde.