The author of experimental prose, mixing elements of conventional narratives with autofiction, textuality, intertextuality and, in some cases, fantasy, he placed his work at the meeting point between Postmodernism and a minimalist form of Neorealism.

This approach is illustrated by his volumes of stories and his novels Zmeura de cîmpie ("Raspberry of the Field"), Tratament fabulatoriu ("Confambulatory Treatment"), and by Femeia în roșu ("The Woman in Red"), a collaborative fiction piece written together with Adriana Babeți and Mircea Mihăieș [ro].

A student at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, specializing in English and French,[3] Nedelciu was attracted into bohemian, cosmopolitan and countercultural circles, growing his hair long and informing himself on new developments in Western culture.

[4] His time as a student overlapped with an episode of liberalization which coincided with the early rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and which, as Nedelciu himself recalled, provided young intellectuals with access to cultural items that were less known or were recovering from official censorship.

[4] Noii, which for a while published an eponymous student magazine,[1] survived both its members' graduation and the national communist backlash inaugurated by the July Theses of 1971, but remained marginal on the literary scene, and discreetly reacted against the new restrictive guidelines by cultivating difference.

[1] With his 1979 volume of short stories, Aventuri într-o curte interioară ("Adventures in an Interior Courtyard"), Nedelciu became a notorious figure among young authors, and earned the Writers' Union annual prize for debut.

[2] Zmeura de cîmpie, Tratament fabulatoriu and the new short prose grouping Și ieri va fi o zi ("And Yesterday Will Be Another Day"), published in 1984, 1986, and 1989, respectively,[1][2][3] were Nedelciu's last volumes to emerge in print before the 1989 Revolution.

[12] A section of the debate opposed Nedelciu to the younger writer Ion Manolescu [ro], the latter of whom had objected to the supposed Optzeciști monopoly on Postmodernist terminology while arguing that a more genuine manifestation of the current was to be found in the emerging forms of electronic literature.

[15] The English-speaking world became the Romanian author's primary cultural reference, and, according to researcher Caius Dobrescu [ro], Nedelciu was one of those "fascinated" with the ideas of Canadian essayist Northrop Frye on "the constant degeneration of the character" in Western literature.

"[27] In addition to this, she identifies a "kaleidoscope" effect, which subverts the order of realistic details between the levels of each narrative, concluding: "The manner in which Mircea Nedelciu has captured everyday banality leaves the impression of a film based on real fact, where the characters and incidents have been introduced for aesthetic reasons.

In Negrici's view, the self-referential and ironic works produced by such writers hindered the development of local literature on a more solid basis, and their embrace by the established critics diverted attention from older, classically Modernist authors.

[2][30] Ștefănescu objected in particular to Nedelciu's theory about the need to eliminate "mystification" in prose, commenting that the awareness of conventions was accessible to "every reader", and the contrary effort brought to mind "someone who, storming into a cinema hall, [starts] shouting 'My brothers, don't let yourselves be fooled!

"[2] He also challenged Nedelciu's view of self-referential prose was a path to interactivity, arguing that, although the writing process was exposed, the readers' passive role could not be modified: "they can only watch upon the authors' demagogic gesticulation and later conclude that the latter have still pursued their narrative as intended.

[31] For Ştefănescu, the nature of language experiments in Mircea Nedelciu's short fiction is not innovative in its recourse to orality, and its techniques of constrained writing affect the personal message—citing his record of the 1977 prison term, which follows a strict pattern of grammatical conjugation.

[30] Taking his distance from the negative critical revisions, in particular that contributed by Ştefănescu, Crăciun claimed: "The narratological issues posed by Mircea Nedelciu's writing style [...] have been improperly treated—as aspects on their own, isolated from their subjects, situations, characters and contents—[...] because prose experiment in our country is still seen as an extravagant phenomenon, exterior to creation as such, of doubtful value, arousing suspicion when not in fact pejorative labels.

[11][19] Mircea Mihăieș recalled that, during the writing process for Femeia în roșu, he had confronted his colleague on the issue of his preface being "annoying and false through its leftism, its opportunistic Marxism", and mentioned having received an enraged justification in response.

[1] A critically acclaimed section of the volume is Provocare în stil Moreno ("Moreno-style Provocation"), called by Dinițoiu a "wonderful prose [which nevertheless] entangles itself in its own meta-textual armor, pressing on its vibration-loaded core.

[35] Taking the book's dedication to veterans of Romania's 1944-1945 campaign as her clue, critic Simona Vasilache discusses the text as a generational epic, stressing that the hidden theme is the fate of anti-fascists entrapped by communism.

[11][14][19] Like in Zmeura de cîmpie, the small community benefiting from these guidelines finds its preoccupation in historical research: its leader Marius asks his comrades to piece together the career of his supposed ancestor, Neculai Fiston-Gulianu.

[1] Subtitled Variațiuni în căutarea temei ("Variations in Search of a Theme"), it merges biographical details with imagined elements, recounting in three different ways the journey of Mureşan Vasile (or Murivale), who travels to Bucharest in order to stand wake for poet Nichita Stănescu.

[1] Cordoş concludes: "Life is made of cunning, betrayals, affection and exasperation, marital strife and unexpected complicity, which Nedelciu constructs not in antithesis but in a complementary way so that art will acquire, even in the eyes of petty people, a radiance inexplicable to them.

"[24] Although she argues that the stated goal of overturning "ancient complexes of the Romanian writer" is left open, Simona Sora sees Femeia în roșu and its "virtuosity" as imposing the autofictional model in front of conventional "artifice".

"[1] He also commented on the "tricks" his literature had developed in its confrontation with both the threat of death and the debilitating character of his disease: "For example, [describing] in detail a healthy foot, the toes that waggle freely up and down, the mobility of a fine ankle, the play of the shins and thighs in dance—all these things place my hideous adversary in a real crisis of uncertainty.

And for good reason too, given that, in fact, behind the Cousteauesque design, my mind encrypts the adversities (the chill, the frost) of this entire world I'm living in, this symbolic coldness of Romania's communist society in the year 1989, and the body naturally refuses this exile 'up North'.

"[34] According to Lefter, Nedelciu was actually reworking his notion of layered meanings into the diving metaphor, adapting an earlier interest in the techniques of art restoration (in turned provoked by his discussions with muralist Viorel Grimalschi).

[14][34] The impact of communism and collectivization is reflected as a collective tragedy,[6][14][34] and the start of an apparent Bildungsroman,[14] depicting the Sava family's encounters with the Securitate secret police, the life of debauchery he leads in order to liberate himself from pressures, and his employment at the Securitate-led Great Institute of History.

[34] These episodes also mark the return of Zare Popescu, the protagonist of Zmeura de cîmpie, who works with Dio at the Institute and whom again experiences life through digressions into historical symbolism, which this time are explicitly about dictatorship.

"[15] This, the critic argues, results in a "representative text for Mircea Nedelciu's prose", or "a story told with naturalness and well-tempered irony, about the ambiguity of relations between the narrator, the characters and the reader, about their double rooting in reality and textuality, as well as about their adventures in this 'through the looking-glass country' that is literature.

"[15] The main intertextual reference in this case is Ernest Hemingway: Uriaşa şi ciudata pasăre a viselor noastre transmits images or sections of text borrowed from The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hills Like White Elephants and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.

"[14] According to Dinițoiu (who bases her conclusions on 2005 inquires among University of Bucharest students), Nedelciu's popularity declined not just because of his difficult stylistic approach, but also because "the referent" of "microrealism" has vanished—whereas Cărtărescu's "imaginative constructs" had maintained "a good quotation on the market of values.