Train to Trieste

From page one of this lyrical, clear-eyed, and moving novel, Mona Maria Manoliu draws us into her world: a lush universe of sensuality, hunger, and passion. Her story begins in 1977, in a village at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in Ceausescu's Romania. She is seventeen and madly in love with a mysterious, handsome boy called Mihai. When Mona's friends and family begin to disappear, Mona begins to wonder about this man she has fallen for. One night, narrowly escaping the police, she flees to Chicago, where she struggles to move forward and not to look back, to bury the longing for the country and the man she left without a goodbye. But when her dying father urges her to return to Romania, she realizes that she must journey back to find out the truth about her one great love. Domnica Radulescu was born in Romania and came to the United States in 1983. She holds a PhD 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. Train to Trieste is her first novel.