Novelist of history, memory, and mystery, where the fabulous grows naturally from the real.
Doina Ruști is a Romanian novelist whose work explores the porous boundary between reality and the fantastic, from contemporary narratives (Ferenike) to 18th-century Balkan worlds and a body of urban legends and mythologies inspired by Bucharest and the Romanian Plain.
One of Romania’s most acclaimed contemporary writers, she is the author of fourteen novels and three short story collections, translated into more than fifteen languages and studied in Romanian schools. Her most awarded novel, The Ghost in the Mill, is a haunting parable of communism.
Her Phanariot Trilogy — The Phanariot Manuscript, The Book of Perilous Dishes, and Homeric — reimagines 18th-century Balkan history through fantastical and symbolic lenses. The Book of Perilous Dishes appeared in English with Neem Tree Press (UK, 2022 & 2024), was reviewed in The Guardian, praised by the Historical Novels Society, and selected by Amazon booksellers and international readers’ clubs.
Her recent novels include Zavaidoc in the Year of Love (2024), a bestseller set in interwar Bucharest, and Ferenike (Humanitas, 2025), an autobiographical and politically resonant story of guilt, memory, and feminine resistance.
She has received the Romanian Academy Prize, the Writers’ Union Prose Award, and the Hungarian Writers’ Union Prize for Best Translated Book.
🌐 Website: www.doinarusti.ro
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