Black Sea Twilight

An emotionally intense novel from the author of Train to Trieste.

Evocative, poetic and lush... a delicious page turner of lost love, loaded with magical dreams and real hope. You won't be able to put this one down

Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of VERY VALENTINE and LUCIA, LUCIA

A beautiful love story... Domnica Radulescu has written a powerful and uplifting novel

Domnica Radulescu won a national prize for a volume of short stories when she was twenty, just before she fled her native Romania during Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship. She settled in the United States as a political refugee in 1983.She is a Professor of French and Italian Literature and Chair of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. 
 
Her first novel Train to Trieste won the Library of Virginia Award for Best Fiction. Black Sea Twilight is her second novel. She lives in Lexington, Virginia, with her two sons.

1980s Romania: 
 
As the sun sets on the magical shore of the Black Sea and casts its last rays across the water, all Nora Teodoru can think about is pursuing her dream of becoming an accomplished artist - and of her love for Gigi, her childhood boyfriend from the Turkish part of town. 
 
But storm clouds are gathering as life under Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu becomes increasingly unbearable. His secret police are circling, never far from the young couple's doors. 
 
Nora and Gigi make plans to escape to Turkey. But nothing can prepare them for the events that follow...

Domnica Radulescu

A coming of age story, a struggle for political integrity and female identity, a wonderful love story - the book engages us on many levels.

Bernhard Schlink, author of THE READER and HOMECOMING.

I was swept away by Domnica Radulescu's debut novel. It's at once a haunting journey to a faraway country, beautiful and terrifying, and an odyssey straight to the heart of a young girl and the remarkable woman she becomes. Deeply moving and deeply felt, Train to Trieste is an unforgettable story that introduces a new and astonishingly fresh voice.

Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha

It is 1977 and seventeen-year-old Mona Manoliu has fallen in love with Mihai, a mysterious boy who lives in the romantic mountain city where she spends her summers. She can think of nothing and no one else. 
 
But life under Ceausescu's Romania is difficult. Hunger, paranoia and fear infect everyone. One day Mona sees Mihai wearing the black leather jacket favoured by the secret police. Is it possible he is one of them? As food shortages worsen and more of her loved ones disappear, Mona comes to understand that she must leave Romania. 
 
She escapes in secret - narrowly avoiding the police - through Yugoslavia to Italy, and finally to Chicago. But she leaves without saying a final goodbye to Mihai. And though she struggles to bury her longing for the past, many years later she finds herself compelled to return, determined to learn the truth.

Domnica Radulescu

Praise for Train to Trieste

A coming of age story, a struggle for political integrity and female identity, a wonderful love story - the book engages us on many levels.

I was swept away by Domnica Radulescu's debut novel. It's at once a haunting journey to a faraway country, beautiful and terrifying, and an odyssey straight to the heart of a young girl and the remarkable woman she ...

Books by Domnica Radulescu

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter