This author is the Rumanian novelist probably best known to Americans. Dumitriu's successful early literary career included writing for magazines in Bucharest, winning the Rumanian State Prize for Literature three times, and serving as director of the State Publishing House. In 1960, however, he left Rumania to live in the West, escaping through East Berlin. Meeting at the Last Judgment (1962), based on his own experiences, presents a revealing picture of the fear-ridden lives of the Rumanian communist elite. Incognito (1962) "reemphasizes the author's earlier theme: the awesome power with which the communists are able to take over a country once the will of its people has been demoralized" (LJ). Its sequel, The Extreme Occident (1964) shows "the whole of present-day Western Europe as one vast cesspool of aimlessness, desperation, and lost or corrupted values" (SR). Dumitriu's books are alive with melodramatic cloak-and-dagger activities, as well as the ideological overtones noted above. He now lives in Germany.
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