Children of the Night: The Strange and Epic Story of Modern Romania

"An utterly compelling, wickedly sharp narrative history of one of the strangest countries in Europe, by the bestselling author of Dictatorland. In Children of the Night, broadcaster and author Paul Kenyon explores the darkest reaches of the modern history of Romania - the mythical land of vampires. The only country in Eastern Europe to speak a Latin language, Romania has always felt itself to be different, and its fate has been to experience some of the most disastrous dictatorships of the last century. Cursed with unstable rulers, in the first world war her German king remained neutral until 1916. The country suffered terribly, but doubled in size after the war, stoking a fervent, xenophobic nationalism that targeted Romania's tiny population of Jews. The interwar rulers and their rivals form a gallery of bizarre characters and movements: the corrupt voluptuary King Carol, the dementedly anti-semitic Iron Guard led by the messianic Corneliu Codreanu, whose followers regarded him as a living saint and were ready to murder and die for him without hesitation, the vain and stupid general Ion Antonescu who seized power in 1940 and led Romania to catastrophe in alliance with Nazi Germany. His regime killed more Jews than any other country apart from Germany itself; the story of the war years is horrific. After 1945 the country was handed over by Stalin to the tiny Romanian communist party, which had almost no popular base, and experienced severe repression, purges and collectivisation. Then in 1964, when the rest of Eastern Europe was emerging from the ice age of Stalinism, Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in the governing party of Romania. Thus began the strangest dictatorship in recent European history. His regime was the most oppressive of all the East European states, modelling itself on Mao's China and Kim's North Korea. The Securitate, his secret police, became a byword for repression and petty surveillance; his gigantic palaces took totalitarian architecture to a new level of kitsch. Children 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: that of his wife, who is now a leading criminal barrister in the UK"--Publisher's description.