Ana Blandiana is one of the most widely acclaimed Romanian writers working today, both at home and abroad. Her books have been published in translation in sixteen countries, and she has received many Romanian and international literary prizes and awards. An outstanding representative of a prodigious generation of young poets who saved Romanian poetry from becoming an instrument of Communist propaganda, she has added to her reputation as a poet that of a prose fiction writer and essayist. Blandiana's dedication to her art has been sustained by an unflinching commitment to spiritual values and moral ideals, despite being banned several times from publishing in her own country.

Blandiana was born Otilia-Valeria Coman on 25 March 1942 in Timisoara, the only child of Gheorghe Coman and Otilia Coman, née Diacu. She was reared in the Transylvanian city of Oradea, where her father was a highly respected Orthodox priest and...