Domnica Radulescu Unveils New Novel COUNTRY OF RED AZALEAS

The reviews are in and COUNTRY OF RED AZALEAS, the new novel by internationally renowned author Domnica Radulescu is an artistic triumph. While her first two novels craft coming of age stories of empowered female protagonists from communist Romania who escape to the United States or to Western Europe, COUNTRY OF RED AZALEAS is inspired by events during the genocidal Balkan war of the nineties and tells the story of a passionate love between two women, the Bosnian Marija and the Serbian Lara, survivors of that war.

The Associated Press called her prose "fluid and languid" and stated that "her pacing is perfect," while BookPage said "in the tradition of Elena Ferrante and Khaled Hosseini, Country of Red Azaleas prevails as a true testament to a bond that transcends the devastation of war." And the internationally best selling author of Frida, Barbara Mujica, said the following in the Washington Independent Review of Books: "Radulescu's novel tells a gripping story, important for its poignancy as well as its insights into the human condition."

Breathlessly recounted by the protagonist/narrator Lara Kulicz, the story traces the tumultuous journeys of the two women who part ways at the start of the war but are eventually reunited with the poignant realization that they are soulmates and partners for life. Despite the deep traumas and painful losses suffered by Marija during the war and Lara's traumatic experiences as an immigrant to the the United States, COUNTRY OF RED AZALEAS is a life affirming story of survival and love written, in the words of award winning writer Marjorie Agosin, "With a poetic intelligence and an extraordinary sense of language and history."

Watch an interview of Domnica Radulescu at Center of Fiction event in New York City!

Having escaped persecution by the secret police in her native Romania as a young college student, Domnica Radulescu landed in Rome, Italy in the fall of 1983 with one small suitcase that contained a handful of her belongings, a smuggled volume of her own short stories and a big dream to become a fiction writer. After settling in Chicago as a political refugee and overcoming many obstacles inherent in an immigrant life in the United States, her dream came true in 2008 when her first novel Train to Trieste was sold to Knopf and in the subsequent months to thirteen foreign publishers from Doubleday in England to Belfond in France, to Hoffman und Kampe in Germany, to Zipora in Israel. The bestselling Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros said this about Radulescu's writing: "Domnica Radulescu is a remarkable writer enriching American letters with her Romanian perspective. We are lucky to call her ours."

In 2009 Radulescu won the Library of Virginia Award for Best Fiction in competition with best-selling authors such as John Grisham. She published her second novel Black Sea Twilight with Doubleday in the UK, in 2010 which made the 100 bestselling charts with the British bookstore chain W.H.Smith. She is presently working on her fourth novel, My Father's Orchards.

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