Doina Rusti Author

Doina Rusti is one of Romania's most successful writers of historical and speculative fiction and has won many prizes. She grew up under communism and this has informed her writing, as have her varied Balkan legacies: a Turkish grandmother, a Macedonian-Romanian great-grandmother. Her grandfather was in a Russian internment camp until Stalin died, and her father was killed when she was 11 years old. In the communist era she was a high school teacher and, although a prolific writer, was unable to publish her works. She joined the street protests that ushered in the 1989 revolution. She lives in and writes about Bucharest in all her novels, for her "the happiest city in the world".