In 1987, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking defector ever from the Eastern bloc, published RED HORIZONS, his expose of the unchecked power and corruption of Nicolae Ceausecu, then the Romanian President and Romanian Communist Party General Secretary, and his wife, Elena. Pacepa’s intention was to bring down the Ceausescu regime and liberate his daughter, whom he had to leave behind in Romania.
 
 When Ceausescu was told of Pacepa’s defection, he suffered a nervous breakdown and ordered Pacepa killed. Ceausescu’s murder squads never succeeded in tracking down Pacepa, who remained in hiding in the U.S.
 
 Not long after the publication of RED HORIZONS, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty began their campaigns to broadcast the book into Romania.
 
 On Christmas Day, 1989, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were executed by military forces who had joined the Romanian people in a spontaneous revolt against one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, bringing an abrupt end to 24 years of Communist tyranny.
 
 On December 26, 1989, "Truth", the Romanian daily newspaper which had declared itself free, began printing excerpts from RED HORIZONS. The editors’ preface to these excerpts said:
 
 "“What can be read in the pages of this book appears to be the fruit of a sick fantasy and yet, every word is true. The publication of this book played an uncontested role in revealing in all its hideousness the true face of a dictatorship, which with diabolical cunningness had managed to outfox a part of the world.""

Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescus' Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption

Set in Romania at the height of Nicolae Ceausescu's reign of terror, this haunting novel tells the story of a group of young students, each of whom has left the impoverished provinces in search of better prospects in the city. It is a profound and powerful look at a totalitarian state which comes to inhabit every aspect of life; to the extent that everyone, even the most strongest, must either bend to the oppressors, or resist them and perish.

The Land of Green Plums

“Occurence In The Immediate Unreality” is an exceptional novel, highly personal and, in the same time, universal, describing the fall into maturity of a young man with exacerbated sensibility. 

The small, insignificant town is the scenery of incredible encounters with different characters, who populate a world far away from the natural rules of the universe. The discovery of the sexuality has in itself the power of the primitive initiations, but also the perversity of the surrealist paintings. 

The laws of friendship rely on the capacity of the two parts to build around them a world without meaning or history. The nature is overwhelming, miraculous, troublesome. The houses live their own lives, being true bodies that breathe, suffer, transform. 

The final, senseless death of a young, beautiful, mysterious young woman brings with it a deep understanding of life as a long series of sufferings and illuminations, administered by fear, nightmares, pain, but also by aesthetic ecstasies and intellectual crisis.

Occurrence In The Immediate Unreality

From the "New York Times" bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan, named one of the world’s Top 100 Global Thinkers by "Foreign Policy" magazine, comes a riveting journey through one of Europe’s frontier countries—and a potent examination of the forces that will determine Europe’s fate in the postmodern age. 

 Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and the country was a bleak Communist backwater. It was one of the darkest corners of Europe, but few Westerners were paying attention. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country—a country that, today, is key to understanding the current threat that Russia poses to Europe. "In Europe’s Shadow" is a vivid blend of memoir, travelogue, journalism, and history, a masterly work thirty years in the making—the story of a journalist coming of age, and a country struggling to do the same. Through the lens of one country, Kaplan examines larger questions of geography, imperialism, the role of fate in international relations, the Cold War, the Holocaust, and more.

 Here Kaplan illuminates the fusion of the Latin West and the Greek East that created Romania, the country that gave rise to Ion Antonescu, Hitler’s chief foreign accomplice during World War II, and the country that was home to the most brutal strain of Communism under Nicolae Ceaușescu. Romania past and present are rendered in cinematic prose: the ashen faces of citizens waiting in bread lines in Cold War–era Bucharest; the Bărăgan Steppe, laid bare by centuries of foreign invasion; the grim labor camps of the Black Sea Canal; the majestic Gothic church spires of Transylvania and Maramureş. Kaplan finds himself in dialogue with the great thinkers of the past, and with the Romanians of today, the philosophers, priests, and politicians—those who struggle to keep the flame of humanism alive in the era of a resurgent Russia.

 Upon his return to Romania in 2013 and 2014, Kaplan found the country transformed yet again—now a traveler’s destination shaped by Western tastes, yet still emerging from the long shadows of Hitler and Stalin. "In Europe’s Shadow" is the story of an ideological and geographic frontier—and the book you must read in order to truly understand the crisis with Russia, and within Europe itself.

Praise for "In Europe’s Shadow"

 “[A] haunting yet ultimately optimistic examination of the human condition as found in Romania . . . Kaplan’s account of the centuries leading up to the most turbulent of all—the twentieth—is both sweeping and replete with alluring detail.”—"The New York Times Book Review"

 “A serious yet impassioned survey of Romania . . . [Kaplan’s] method is that of a foreign correspondent, firing off dispatches from the South China Sea to North Yemen to the darkest corners of Eastern Europe. . . . Kaplan is a regional geographer par excellence.”—"The Christian Science Monitor"

 “Kaplan’s work exemplifies rare intellectual, moral and political engagement with the political order—and disorder—of our world.”—"The Huffington Post"

“A masterly work of important history, analysis, and prophecy about the ancient and modern rise of Romania as a roundabout between Russia and Europe . . . I learned something new on every page.”—Tom Brokaw

 “A favorite of mine for years, Robert D. Kaplan is a thoughtful and insight-driven historian who writes clear and compelling prose, but what I like most about him is his political sophistication. A true pleasure for the reader.”—Alan Furst

In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond

As everyone knows, "nothing" is sweeter than tiny baby fingers and chubby baby toes. . . . And here, from two of the most gifted picture-book creators of our time, is a celebration of baby fingers, baby toes, and the joy they—and the babies they belong to—bring to everyone, everywhere, all over the world! 

This is a gorgeously simple picture book for very young children, and once you finish the rhythmic, rhyming text, all you’ll want to do is go back to the beginning . . . and read it again! The luminous watercolor illustrations of these roly-poly little ones from a variety of backgrounds are adorable, quirky, and true to life, right down to the wrinkles, dimples, and pudges in their completely squishable arms, legs, and tummies.

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes

From the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature

“["The Passport"] has the same clipped prose cadences as Nadirs, this time applied to evoke the trapped mentality of a man so desperate for freedom that he views everything through a temporal lens, like a prisoner staring at a calendar in his cell.”—"Wall Street Journal"

“A swift, stinging narrative, fable-like in its stoic concision and painterly detail.”—"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

"The Passport" is a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu’s dictatorship and the glittering temptations of life in the West. Stories from the past are woven together with the problems Windisch, the village miller, faces after he applies for permission to migrate to West Germany. Herta Müller (Herta Mueller) describes with poetic attention the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat, in the Danube Plain. In sparse, poetic language, Muller captures the forlorn plight of a trapped people.

The Passport

"The Hooligan's Return" is Norman Manea's long-awaited memoir, a portrait of an artist that ranges freely from his early childhood in prewar Romania to his return there in 1997.

In October l941, the entire Jewish population of Manea's native Bukovina was deported to concentration camps. Manea was among them, a child at the time, and his family spent four years there before they were able to return home. Embracing a Communist ethos as a teenager, he becomes disillusioned with the system in place in his country as he matures, having witnessed the growing injustices of dictatorship, and the false imprisonment of his father. But as a writer, Manea wrestles with the fear of losing his native language, his--real--homeland if he leaves his country, though it is clear to him that to stay under such a regime would be well-nigh impossible. Finally, in 1988, he settles in the United States, returning to Romania a decade later. 

A harrowing memoir, "The Hooligan's Return" freely traverses time and place, life and literature, dream and reality, past and present. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, this is the story of a writer more interested in ethics and aesthetics than in politics, a literary man consumed by questions of solitude and solidarity.


The Hooligan's Return: A Memoir

An intimate and devastating portrait of Romania during and after the Second World War, through the prism of a moving and utterly original friendship.Shortlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize.

Painter of Silence

The Gonzo memoir from one of the most influential voices in American literature, "Kingdom of Fear" traces the course of Hunter S. Thompson’s life as a rebel—from a smart-mouthed Kentucky kid flaunting all authority to a convention-defying journalist who came to personify a wild fusion of fact, fiction, and mind-altering substances.

Brilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S. Thompson's infamous rule breaking—in his journalism, in his life, and under the law—changed the shape of American letters, and the face of American icons.

 Call it the evolution of an outlaw. Here are the formative experiences that comprise Thompson’s legendary trajectory alongside the weird and the ugly. Whether detailing his exploits as a foreign correspondent in Rio, his job as night manager of the notorious O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, his epic run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, or the sensational legal maneuvering that led to his full acquittal in the famous 99 Days trial, Thompson is at the peak of his narrative powers in Kingdom of Fear. And this boisterous, blistering ride illuminates as never before the professional and ideological risk taking of a literary genius and transgressive icon.

Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Spanning a period of 2000 years from the Roman conquest of Dacia to the present day, A Concise History of Romania traces the development of a unique nation situated on the border between East and West. In this illuminating new history, Keith Hitchins explores Romania's struggle to find its place amidst two diverse societies: one governed by Eastern orthodox tradition, spirituality and agriculture and the other by Western rationalism, experimentation and capitalism. The book charts Romania's advancement through five significant phases of its history: medieval, early modern, modern and finally the nation's 'return to Europe'; evaluating all the while Romania's part in European politics, economic and social change, intellectual and cultural renewals and international entanglements. This is a fascinating history of an East European nation; one which sheds new light on the complex evolution of the Romanians and the identity they have successfully crafted from a unique synthesis of traditions.

A Concise History of Romania

“The greatest works of poetry are the stories we tell about ourselves."

When the renowned poet Fiona Skinner is asked about the inspiration behind her iconic work, "The Love Poem", she tells her audience a story about her family and a betrayal that reverberates through time.

It begins in a big yellow house, with a funeral, an iron poker, and a brief variation forever known as the Pause: a free and feral summer in a middle-class Connecticut town. Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future that stretches before them, the Skinner siblings—fierce Renee, sensitive Caroline, golden-boy Joe and watchful Fiona—emerge from the Pause staunchly loyal and deeply connected.  Two decades later, the siblings find themselves once again confronted with a family crisis that tests the strength of these bonds and forces them to question the life choices they’ve made and to ask what, exactly, they are willing to do for love. 

A sweeping yet intimate epic about one American family, "The Last Romantics" is an unforgettable exploration of the ties that bind us together, the responsibilities we embrace and the duties we resent, and how we can lose—and sometimes rescue—the ones we love. A novel that pierces the heart and lingers in the mind, it is also a beautiful meditation on the power of stories—how they guide us through difficult times, help us understand the past, and point the way toward our future.

The Last Romantics

The true story behind the legend of Dracula - a biography of Prince Vlad of Transylvania, better known as Vlad the Impaler. This revised edition now includes entries from Bram Stoker's recently discovered diaries, the amazing tale of Nicolae Ceausescu's attempt to make Vlad a national hero, and an examination of recent adaptations in fiction, stage and screen.

In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires

Ten-year-old Silvia Marcu lives in the magical world of fairy tales, sheltered from the traumatic events Romania goes through during the sixties. As the events of 1968 unfold, she is assailed by questions no one, not even her parents, can answer. With imagination and candor, Silvia embarks on a miraculous journey that reveals that the ordinary people around us hold the key to our most puzzling questions...

Kafka's House

An incandescent love story—a thrilling debut novel—that moves from Romania to America, from the Carpathian Mountains to Chicago, from totalitarianism to freedom, and from passionate infatuation to profound understanding. 

In the summer of 1977, seventeen-year-old Mona Manoliu falls in love with Mihai, a mysterious, green-eyed boy who lives in Brasov, the romantic mountain city where she spends her summers. She can think of nothing, and no one, else. But life under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu is difficult. Hunger and paranoia infect everyone; fear, too. And one day, Mona sees Mihai wearing the black leather jacket favored by the secret police. Could he be one of them?

As food shortages worsen, as more and more of her loved ones disappear in “accidents,” Mona comes to understand that she must leave Romania. She escapes in secret—narrowly avoiding the police—through Yugoslavia to Italy, and then to Chicago, a city she calls “fit for my hunger.” But she leaves without saying a final good-bye to Mihai. And though she struggles to bury her longing for the past—she becomes a doctoral student, marries, has children—she finds herself compelled to return to her country, determined to learn the truth about her one great love.

Seductive, suspenseful, intensely evocative, and told in an astonishingly original, poetic voice, "Train to Trieste "is a force of language and emotion, as acutely observed as it is impossible to put down.

Train to Trieste

Black Sea Twilight

Juxtaposing reality and fantasy, nightmares and dark laughter, "Nadirs" is a collection of largely autobiographical stories based on Herta Müller's childhood in the Romanian countryside. The individual tales reveal a child s often nightmarish impressions of life in her village. Seamlessly mixing reality with dream-like images, they brilliantly convey the inner, troubled life of a child and at the same time capture the violence and corruption of life under an oppressive state. Herta Müller has been one of the most prolific and acclaimed German-language writers of the last decade. Born in 1953 in the Banat, a German-language region of Romania, she emigrated to West Berlin in 1987 and currently resides in Hamburg. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Kleist Prize. In 1998 her novel "The Land of Green Plums" was awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Nadirs

Emilia, a pensioner in northern Romania, is forced to confront the nostalgic illusions she nurtures as a reaction to the grim post-communist present when her daughter, now living in Canada, telephones urging her not to vote for the former communists in upcoming elections. Determined to discover in her own mind why ‘things were better back then,’ she explores her memories of growing up in an impoverished village and of her life as a factory worker in the town. But ironic tension grows as the reader glimpses between the lines how nothing was what it seemed in Ceaușescu’s Romania. Interspersed among Emilia’s memories are fantastical, hilarious anecdotes about the dictator, told by a factory foreman who will turn out to have been a secret police informer. I’m an Old Commie! is a subtle and humane novel about self-deception, but also about the ways in which a totalitarian state twisted ordinary lives.

I'm an Old Commie!

With her father in prison and her family under surveillance in their beloved village home, surrounded by microphones and informed on by the neighbours, Carmen was abruptly forced to leave her childhood behind. Six years later, under threat of death, the family was expelled from Romania. She didn't expect ever to return.

Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Ivor Porter took a job in Romania teaching English and became so involved in the political events of the capital, Bucharest, that he was to feature later in Olivia Manning's "The Balkan Trilogy". Porter left the country in 1940 when Romania became a satellite of the Axis powers, but returned three years later as part of an SOE plot to overthrow the pro-German government of Marshal Antonescu. Operation Autonomous and the subsequent coup not only hastened the end of the European war by six months, but were to have a profound effect on the post-war settlement of Eastern Europe. Combining the author's own adventures and experiences with detailed military and diplomatic history, this book examines an often neglected but crucial military operation of the war.

Operation Autonomous: With S.O.E. in Wartime Romania

Radu Ioanid's account of the destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the regime of Ion Antonescu, based upon privileged access to secret East European government archives, is an unprecedented analysis of heretofore purposely hidden materials. He builds an accurate perspective on Romanian policies of racism, anti-Semitism, and Jewish extermination during this extraordinary period in world history. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. With a Foreword by Elie Wiesel. Invaluable...monumental...no comparable work in any language has documented this important history with the thoroughness, skill, and analytical sophistication this book demonstrates. Leo Spitzer, Dartmouth College

The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944

In the first century AD, Publius Ovidius Naso, the most urbane and irreverent poet of imperial Rome, was banished to a remote village on the edge of the Black Sea. From these sparse facts, one of our most distinguished novelists has fashioned an audacious and supremely moving work of fiction.

Marooned on the edge of the known world, exiled from his native tongue, Ovid depends on the kindness of barbarians who impale their dead and converse with the spirit world. But then he becomes the guardian of a still more savage creature, a feral child who has grown up among deer. What ensues is a luminous encounter between civilization and nature, as enacted by a poet who once catalogued the treacheries of love and a boy who slowly learns how to give it.

An Imaginary Life

A bewitching, dark and beautiful debut novel about a girl living in the shadow of a mysterious curse.

It's the accident season, the same time every year. Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom.

The accident season has been part of seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as she can remember. Towards the end of October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them, Cara's family becomes inexplicably accident-prone. They banish knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table edges with padding, switch off electrical items - but injuries follow wherever they go, and the accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession and fear.

But why are they so cursed? And how can they break free?

The Accident Season

This is the first biography of King Michael of Romania for many years. Based on royal archives, Queen Helen's unpublished diaries, sources in Romania, and interviews with King Michael, Queen Helen and Crown Princess Margarita, it integrates the story of Michael with that of the country which he once ruled, and which he once tried to save. during the Second World War. After refusing to be a puppet to give legitimacy to the regime Hitler had set up in Romania he led a coup d'etat against the Germans which shortened the war and postponed the communist dictatorship of his country. For three years, from 1944-7, with the Soviet army in occupation, the Western Allies unable to help, and the two main democratic parties virtually destroyed, he hung on grimly to some degree of constitutional democracy until Stalin showed his hand. affection and support by the Romanian people. When he returned in 1996 he told them, 'I love you. Don't forget that.'

Michael of Romania

Athene Palace

Bucharest Diary: Romania's Journey from Darkness to Light

This book stems from the idea that there is a considerable difference between real history and discourse history. Boia points out that history is constantly reconstructed, adapted and sometimes mythified from the perspective of the present day, of present states of mind and ideologies. Boia closely examines the process of historical culture and conscience in nineteenth and twentieth century Romania, particularly concentrating on the impact of the national ideology on history. Based upon his findings, the author identifies several key mythical configurations and analyses the manner in which Romanians have reconstituted their own highly ideologized history over the last two centuries. The strength of History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness lies in the author's ability to fully deconstruct the entire Romanian historiographic system and demonstrate the increasing acuteness of national problems in general, and in particular the exploitation of history to support national ideology.

History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness

Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships. Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include: * customs, values, and traditions * historical, religious, and political background * life at home * leisure, social, and cultural life * eating and drinking * do's, don'ts, and taboos * business practices * communication, spoken and unspoken

Romania - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs  Culture

This guide describes 27 short treks of 2-6 days and 10 day walks in the mountains of Romania. Although there is a slight focus on Transylvania, most of the main massifs are included, with chapters covering the Mountains of Maramures, the Eastern Carpathians, the mountains around Brasov, the Fagaras, the region between the Olt and the Jiu, the Retezat, the mountains of Banat and the Apuseni. Also included is an ascent of Moldoveanu, Romania's highest peak at 2544m. There is a wealth of advice to help you plan your trip and organise the logistics of your walk or trek. Some routes avail of the network of mountain huts; others offer opportunities to camp in attractive wild locations. Overviews and a route summary table make it easy to choose an appropriate excursion. Each route includes clear description and mapping, as well as notes on accommodation and access (some can be accessed by public transport, although others require either pre-arranged pick-up or hitchhiking).

 There are fascinating insights into Romania's colourful culture and history and appendices containing hut listings, useful contacts and a helpful glossary. The graded routes are as varied as Romania's diverse landscapes. They take in rolling hills, craggy karst peaks, glacial lakes and Europe's last virgin forests, with other highlights including Transylvanian castles, wooden churches, the Piatra Craiului ridge and the spectacular Sapte Scari (Seven Ladders) and Turda Gorges. Historic towns such as the medieval towns of Brasov and Sibiu and the spa resort of Vatra Dornei offer easy access to the mountains; other routes visit remote villages that have changed little over the centuries, where self-sufficiency is still very much the way of life. All in all, the guide is a perfect companion to discovering the unspoilt beauty of Romania's enchanting mountain regions.

The Mountains of Romania: Trekking and walking in the Carpathian Mountains

HER: 
I thought the only thing I feared was living another day in the hell my life had become. But when I looked at his hulking, tattooed body, the icy brutality in his eyes, I realized I was wrong. 
 
HIM: 
Familie. My clan. 
I’d fight for it, kill for it, die for it. It’s all that matters to me. But her innocence, only barely hidden by thick layers of makeup, the curves that her tight dress can’t hide, calls to me. 
So I’ve decided to keep her. 
No matter how deadly the consequences. 


Keep (Romanian Mob Chronicles, #1)

Romania fielded the third-largest Axis army in the European war. A military contribution of such magnitude, coupled with the delivery of oil to the German war machine and the personal respect which Ion Antonescu enjoyed from Hitler, places Romania on a par with Italy as a principal ally of Germany. Antonescu's precise role and the policies of Romania under his direction - especially towards the Jews - has been impeded in English-speaking accounts by the lack of a complete biography - this volume aims to fill this gap.


Hitler's Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania, 1940 -1944

"British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War" is the first monograph to examine the activity throughout the entire war of SOE and MI6. It was generally believed in Britain's War Office, after Hitler's occupation of Austria in March 1938, that Germany would seek to impose its will on South-East Europe before turning its attention towards Western Europe. Given Romania's geographical position, there was little Britain could offer her. The brutal fact of British-Romanian relations was that Germany was inconveniently in the way: opportunity, proximity of manufacture and the logistics of supply all told in favour of the Third Reich. This held, of course, for military as well as economic matters. In these circumstances the British concluded that their only weapon against German ambitions in countries which fell into Hitler's orbit were military subversive operations and a concomitant attempt to draw Romania out of her alliance with Germany.

British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War

In cool, precise prose, and with an unerring sense of the absurd, Norman Manea's four novellas create a picture of everyday life in a grotesque police state, expressing terror and hope, fear and solidarity, the humorous triviality of the ordinary, and the painful search for an ideal.


Compulsory Happiness

Survivor of the Nazi camps and Ceausescu's Romania, winner of the National Book Award, recipient of a MacArthur Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Norman Manea, an extraordinary man of letters, "gives us a taste of something beyond the scope of even our twentieth-century imagination. . . . Manea is too profound a witness to place his gift for observation in the service of another sensualist account. . . . What matters for him is the phenomenon of an entire nation's life under this simultaneously grotesque and terrifying rule." -- The New Republic

On Clowns: The Dictator and The Artist: Essays

A collection of short stories stemming from the Romanian author's detention in a Nazi concentration camp as a child evokes a sense of the horror and absurdity of war and Romanian politics.

October, Eight O'Clock Stories

Communist Terror In Romania: Gheorghui Dej And The Police State, 1948 65

Romanian History: A Captivating Guide to the History of Romania and Vlad the Impaler

Winner of the 2004 Prix de Flore—one of France's most distinguished literary prizes—a wildly romantic, true-life love story

History follows a trail of sputtering desire, often calling upon the delusions of lovers to generate the sparks. If it weren’t for us, the world would suffer from a dismal lack of stories," writes Bruce Benderson in this brutally candid memoir.

What astonishes and intrigues is Benderson’s way of recounting, in the sweetest possible voice, things that are considered shocking,” wrote "Le Monde". What’s so shocking? It’s not just Benderson’s job translating Céline Dion’s saccharine autobiography, which he admits is driving him mad; but his passion for an impoverished Romanian in �cheap club-kid platforms with dollar signs in his squinting eyes,” whom he meets while on a journalism assignment in Eastern Europe.

Rather than retreat, Benderson absorbs everything he can about Romanian culture and discovers an uncanny similarity between his own obsession for the Romanian (named Romulus) and the disastrous love affair of King Carol II, the last king of Romania (1893-1953). Throughout, Benderson—�absolutely free of bitterness, nastiness, or any desire to protect himself,” wrote "Le Monde"—is sustained by little white codeine pills, a poetic self-awareness, a sense of humor, and an unwavering belief in the perfect romance, even as wild dogs chase him down Romanian streets.

The Romanian: Story of an Obsession

The history of Romania is the history of the Romanian people. Nicolae Klepper, a native Romanian, gives us all of Romania-from the days of the Roman Empire to the fall of communism, and beyond. As a country, Romania has only existed since 1859, but the history of its people stretches back to the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, to the Geto-Dacians and the Romans. This concise yet thorough narrative tells the fascinating story of the evolution of the Romanians, the creation of the Romanian Principalities, their struggle against empire-building powers, and their eventual unification to form the state of Romania. Many chapters begin with a section entitled "Perspective," which provides context for Romanian history by describing events occurring simultaneously in other parts of Europe. The book's engaging, accessible format features over eighty illustrations, maps, and charts.

Romania

Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescus' Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption

Ion Mihai Pacepa

The Land of Green Plums

Herta Müller

Occurrence In The Immediate Unreality

Max Blecher

In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond

Robert D. Kaplan

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes

Mem Fox

The Passport

Herta Müller

The Hooligan's Return: A Memoir

Norman Manea

Painter of Silence

Georgina Harding

Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Hunter S. Thompson

A Concise History of Romania

Keith Hitchins

The Last Romantics

Tara Conklin

In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires

Raymond T. McNally

Kafka's House

Gabriela Popa

Train to Trieste

Domnica Radulescu

Black Sea Twilight

Domnica Radulescu

Nadirs

Herta Müller

I'm an Old Commie!

Dan Lungu

Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police

Carmen Bugan

Operation Autonomous: With S.O.E. in Wartime Romania

Ivor Porter

The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944

Radu Ioanid

An Imaginary Life

David Malouf

The Accident Season

Moïra Fowley-Doyle

Michael of Romania

Ivor Porter

Athene Palace

R.G. Waldeck

Bucharest Diary: Romania's Journey from Darkness to Light

Alfred H. Moses

History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness

Lucian Boia

Romania - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs Culture

Debbie Stowe

The Mountains of Romania: Trekking and walking in the Carpathian Mountains

Janneke Klop

Keep (Romanian Mob Chronicles, #1)

Kaye Blue

Hitler's Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania, 1940 -1944

Dennis Deletant

British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War

Dennis Deletant

Compulsory Happiness

Norman Manea

On Clowns: The Dictator and The Artist: Essays

Norman Manea

October, Eight O'Clock Stories

Norman Manea

Communist Terror In Romania: Gheorghui Dej And The Police State, 1948 65

Dennis Deletant

Romanian History: A Captivating Guide to the History of Romania and Vlad the Impaler

Captivating History

The Romanian: Story of an Obsession

Bruce Benderson

Romania: An Illustrated History

Nicolae Klepper