Although he started writing and publishing early in his life, Ion D. Sîrbu emerged as a major literary figure only after 1989, when his previously unpublished works came to be known by a wider public. He combined the genteel and cultivated tradition of his generation of friends with an earthier, simpler, and grosser kind of carnivalesque humor and pessimism. This hidden work of the 1980s propelled Sîrbu into the first ranks of Romanian writing.

Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu was born on 28 June 1919 in the village of Petrila (Hunedoara County) in central Romania. His father, Ioan Sîrbu, was a miner, and his mother, Ecaterina Glaser, was of German-Czech background. Sîrbu was decisively influenced by the ways of life and thinking of the mining subculture in the Jiu Valley. He still found many rural traditions there, blended with trade-union, working-class ethics; an...