One of the most prominent figures in Romanian literature of the second half of the twentieth century, Mircea Horia Simionescu first gained recognition as part of the so-called Tîrgoviste School, a group of young writers, including Radu Petrescu and Cosache Olareanu, who emerged in the early 1970s determined to renew the creative spirit and originality of Romanian prose by embracing the techniques of European modernism. The Tîrgoviste School resumed the innovative literary experimentation that had characterized Romanian fiction between the two world wars. It also prepared the way for the postmodernist "generation of the 1980s."

Simionescu was born on 23 January 1928 in Tîrgoviste in the hilly area of Muntenia, the first of two sons of Nicolae and Irina Popescu Simionescu. His father was an infantry officer, his mother a post office clerk. Simionescu attended the local primary school and then Ienachita Varaescu High...