Gabriela Adamesteanu is one of the best known contemporary Romanian writers. Her books, written in a colorful and colloquial style, have been translated into more than 10 languages, turning her into a bestselling author.

By Alexandra Fodor

Gabriela Adamesteanu was born in 1942 in Targu Ocna, Romania. She studied Romanian literature at the University of Bucharest, graduating with a dissertation on the characters in Proust’s fiction.  Wasted Morning, published in 1984, is by far her best-known work. The book describes a multi-perspective portrait of Romania in the 20th century.

"They say that I have one of the finest "ears" in Romanian literature, because I have given a voice to each of my characters. I think that my "ear" came about because I lived in an isolated country, I wrote far from the literary world, and I never thought I would see my books in translation, no more than I thought of going to Mars," Adamesteanu wrote about herself and her work.

Her best selling novels include The Equal Way of Every Day (1975), Give Yourself a Holiday (1979), Wasted Morning (1984), Summer-Spring (1989), The Encounter (2007), Provisional (2010). The short stories collected in Summer-Spring have been translated into English, German, Hungarian, Dutch, Russian and Estonian and have appeared in different anthologies and magazines. She has also published collections of journalistic works and memoirs.

Between 1998 and 2001, as a member of Women’s Edition, she championed women rights in Romania. In 2002, she was awarded a Hellmann Hammett Grant by Human Rights Watch for her commitment to the democratization of Romania. Her national awards include the Romanian Academy Award for Fiction (1975), the Romanian Writers Union Award (1984), and the National Award for Fiction (2004).

In 2005, she was the special guest of Les Belles Etrangeres festival in France and in 2006 she participated at the Literaturfestival in Berlin, Germany. The same year she was short-listed for the Prix Union Latine. In 2007, excerpts from her novel Provisional have appeared in the US anthology Words Without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers.

She had readings at the Pisa Book Festival, Frankfurt Book Fair, “Insolite Roumanie” Festival in Paris, “Days and Nights” International Literature Festival.

In 2010, the French edition of her novel The Equal Way of Every Day was nominated for Prix Jean Monnet de Litterature Europeenne. Recently, she was a guest author of the 7th New Literature from Europe Festival in New York, an annual series of discussion and readings featuring eight highly praised European writers.  “Wasted Morning”, translated by Patrick Camiller, will be Adamesteanu’s first novel in English, to be published in spring 2011 by Northwestern University Press.

alex@romania-insider.com