Ferenike by Doina Ruști
2026-06-06 10:00 - 11:30 UTC
Books from Homeland
Our next read for the book club is Ferenike by acclaimed author Doina Ruști, who will join our virtual discussion!
A limited number of signed copies of the book will be available for purchase at the upcoming art exhibit, State of Color by Sanda Berar, on May 9. Learn more here.
About the bookFerenike is a confessional, autobiographical novel built on the idea that no choice is entirely subjective. There exists a demon of grand History — a force that, for Eastern Europe, has always been a subtle architect of both individual and collective decisions. In the essential reality, every choice is orchestrated.
Having as a starting point a childhood event, the novel gradually outlines experiences related to our present. Every insignificant deed has consequences, generates other events and a new perspective of the past. This premise leads to a gripping and powerful story about the discreet role that any individual has in the metamorphoses of great history.
An autobiographical novel, Ferenike is also an experiment researching confession, from its mystical to histrionic or manipulative areas, with the stated intention of reminding the world that, beyond intention, there’s always the force of the storyteller.
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About the author
Doina RuștiDoina Ruști is „a writer of the first rank in today’s literature", in the words of Nicolae Breban , and „a writer of great talent and intuition”, as Norman Manea has described her, distinguished by a powerful and vibrant style. Her novels and short stories have received major awards, been translated into several languages, and are studied in schools, enjoying wide critical recognition. Her work is marked by the blending of the fantastic with stark social realism. Her landmark novel is The Ghost in the Mill (2008), a powerful fiction about Romanian communism, included in the post-communist neo-Gothic both in J. A. Weinstock’s Routledge encyclopediaand in Studies in Gothic Fiction (Zittaw Press). Thematically complementary, Ferenike (Humanitas, 2025) is her most personal novel, a political and autobiographical fiction about memory, guilt, and feminine resistance. Equally acclaimed is Lizoanca at Eleven (2009), a novel about child prostitution, whose style was compared by Western critics to Camus’s The Plague (Il Libero), and which has been included in several European academic programs, among them the Doctoral School of the University of Barcelona. The Phanariot Trilogy—The Phanariot Manuscript, The Book of Perilous Dishes (Mâța Vinerii), and Homeric—has enjoyed wide popularity. These novels explore the 18th-century Balkan imagination in an original, fabulatory mode that reinterprets history. Mircea Muthu devoted a chapter to her work in his volume Romanian Literary Balkanism. Among these, The Book of Perilous Dishes is the most widely translated, published in English in London (2022), recommended by EUFestival and featured by the Historical Novel Society. Her distinctions include the Writers’ Union Prize (Bucharest Association, 2007), the Romanian Writers’ Union Prize for Prose (2008), the Ion Creangă Prize of the Romanian Academy (2009), and the Hungarian Writers’ Prize (Budapest, 2018) for Best Translated Book. Website: www.doinarusti.ro

📌 June 6 at 10amvirtual discussion with author Doina Ruști
Please RSVP below to receive zoom link.
About the author
