Domnica Radulescu

Domnica Radulescu was born in Romania and came to the United States in 1983. She holds a Ph.D in French and Italian Literature from the University of Chicago, and is currently a Professor of Romance Languages and Chair of the Women's Studies program at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. She has written and edited books and scholarly articles on European and Eastern European literature, and has also worked in theater for two decades, directing plays by Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Fernando Arrabal, and Jean Tardieu. She is a recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Fulbright grants. In 2008 her first novel, "Train to Trieste", was published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Train to Trieste

[http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307268235 "Train to Trieste"] is Radulescu's first novel. It is published by [http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/home.pperl Alfred A. Knopf] .

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.