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Book Reviews
A readable and well-told tale filled with color, sensitivity, humor and plenty of research.
—Midwest Book Review
Four flags over Romania
DRACULA IS DEAD:
How Romanians Survived Communism,
Ended it, and Emerged Since 1989 as the New Italy
By Sheilah Kast and Jim Rosapepe
400 pp. Bancroft Press $25.95
Reviewed by Jack Shakely
There is probably a rule against saying this so early in a review, but Dracula Is Dead is the damnedest book of its kind I have ever read. Like the country it chronicles, the book is an occasionally brilliant, occasionally befuddling, often funny, and always charming memoir-cum-travel guide.
The husband and wife authors, one of whom was actually ambassador to Romania and the other a well-known journalist, are capable, if sometimes over-enthusiastic writers, adopting a conversational first-person voice that makes the almost unfathomable Romania seem approachable.
If you are like me, you couldn’t find Romania on the map with a GPS and a compass. For the record, it’s a country about twice the size and population of Ohio, with its head in the Carpathian Alps that border Hungary and its rear end in the Black Sea. Above it is the Ukraine; and to the far right are all those countries that end in “–stan,” and below it to the left is Bulgaria, or maybe the Ottoman Empire.
Romania is a country that has never won a single war in history, didn’t have a written language until the time of Shakespeare, and in the mid-nineteenth century, uncertain of its image, decided to become a monarchy by renting a king from Germany. It has been the doormat of Europe for so long, if they ever built a Six Flags Over Romania, they’d be a couple of flagpoles short. But through it all, the Romanian people have remained resilient, philosophical, and filled with good humor.
They’ve needed to be, Kast and Rosapepe remind us. In the twentieth century alone, Romania was ruled by a series of kings and queens who went through money like water, allied with France early in WWII and lost to Hitler, then allied with Hitler and lost to the Allies, and then got thrown to the Soviet Union who installed a puppet president. In a near-fatal blow, they were ruled for two decades by the most despotic, bone-headed, and profligate ruler in modern European history, Nicolae Ceausescu. This is the idiot, you may remember, who pulled a reverse Dracula, injecting unscreened human blood into tens of thousands of orphan babies in the mistaken belief that it would strengthen them. Instead, it gave them AIDS.
The authors don’t ignore this part of Romania’s history, nor do they gloss over it, but their book is actually something of a valentine thrust into the gnarly hands of a people who have come to expect the worst and often get it.
Kast and Rosapepe traveled every mile of Romania, adoring all of its rustic and run-down beauty. Here’s how they describe Bucharest:
What charmed us most was the air of faded elegance suffusing so many neighborhoods: stately nineteenth-century villas with French doors, ornate carvings, and clamshell porticos, often with peeling paint or cracked walls; intriguing streets whose cobblestones were not up to the punishing traffic they take today; and delightful parks with neglected plantings and rusting wrought-iron fences.
And this was written by people who love Romania. Bucharest, the authors remind us, was once called “The Paris of the East,” but in predictable Romanian fashion, nobody can remember exactly who said it, when, or why.
Speaking of Dracula, it is true that Transylvania, the home of Bram Stoker’s bloody Count Dracula, is part of Romania. As with so many things, Romanians are not quite sure what to make of that. Most Romanians have never heard of Dracula; Stoker’s book wasn’t translated into Romanian until 1992. Many of those who do know the story fret that it casts their beautiful Carpathian Alps as dark spidery things right out of a Hammer film. In typical roll-with-the-punch fashion, however, many Romanians see a buck in the renewed international interest in all things vampire. One of the best places to eat in Bucharest, the authors tell us, is the Dracula Club Restaurant, complete with a maître d’ in fangs carrying a candelabra. A Dracula theme park had been in the works, but the current world recession has put that back on the shelf.
Some of the anecdotes in the book had me laughing out loud. The matinee-handsome King Michael, who helped save his country from Nazi control, was then banished by the Soviets for his trouble. Flat broke but highly skilled around airplanes, in a story worthy of Hollywood he got a job in America as a test pilot for Lear Jet. On his way across country to pick up a plane, the handsome Michael was asked by a stewardess if he was in the movies. “No,” he replied. “I am King Michael of Romania.” The stewardess replied with a steely stare, “As if. How dumb do you think I am?”
TV anchorman Sam Donaldson is quoted on the back cover saying, “If you buy only one book about Romania, Dracula Is Dead should be the one.” That’s not setting the bar too high, because it may be the only historical travel book about Romania, period. That doesn’t make it any less charming. And the authors make a good case that Romania may indeed by the New Italy. Unfortunately for Romanians, the trains don’t run on time there, either. But it’s a start.
Jack Shakely is the author of the award-winning historical novel The Confederate War Bonnet. His latest novel, Prisoners at Chigger Lake, will be published in 2010. Shakely is also a senior fellow at the Center for Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California.
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