![]() I believe description of place and character are crucial to help readers immerse themselves in the subject matter. In other words, it remains an elitist minority pursuit, rather than an open book for all to know and to try to understand. Otherwise, the country's history remains dry and inaccessible and debated only by academics exchanging arcane pet theories between themselves. I used Dracula as a way into an otherwise unfamiliar landscape, to bring a new audience to the story of Romania. As soon as the book was published I received critical emails and reviews from historians. It is controversial, I know, to begin with the story of Vlad Tepes - Dracula. I got my chance when I attended an ambassadorial party in Bucharest after the revolution, and met the girl I would later marry. I had always wanted to travel to Romania, seduced by the mixture of fairytales, Cold War politics, and the lost Fin de siècle glamor of the place. It tells of a country which is uniquely situated between the great ideologies, religions and political blocs of the world. This book was twenty-six years in the making. And thus began the strangest dictatorship in recent European history.Ĭhildren of the Night is also a personal discovery of this extraordinary country, bringing together Paul Kenyon's eye for the private vices and kleptocratic tendencies of despots with a heartfelt exploration of the fate of one Romanian family in particular. Then in 1964, Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power. After 1945 power was handed over to Romania's tiny communist party, under whom it experienced severe repression, purges and collectivization. The interwar rulers form a gallery of bizarre characters and movements: the corrupt King Carol the antisemitic Iron Guard led by Corneliu Codreanu the vain general Ion Antonescu who seized power in 1940 and led the country into alliance with Nazi Germany. In the First World War her German king remained neutral until 1916. The only country in Eastern Europe to speak a Latin language, Romania has always felt itself different, and its unique fate has been to experience some of the most disastrous leaderships of the last century.
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