Viaţa mea e un roman

by Adrian Păunescu

307 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Adrian Păunescu (20 July 1943 – 5 November 2010) was a Romanian poet, journalist, and politician. Though criticised for praising dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, Păunescu was called "Romania's most famous poet" in an Associated Press story, quoted by the New York Times.
Born in Copăceni, Bălţi County, in what is now the Republic of Moldova, Păunescu spent his childhood in Bârca, Dolj County. He did his secondary studies at Carol I High School in Craiova.

Păunescu studied philology at the University of Bucharest and became a writer and journalist. He was an influential public figure for Romanian youth throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Though he was criticised for writing flattering poems about dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, Păunescu remained popular in Romania, where he appeared on television several times a week.

As posthumously summarized by newspaper România Liberă, Păunescu "is still viewed as a hero by the man in the street" although "intellectuals continue to question his integrity and the literary value of his work".

Vladimir Tismaneanu called him "the supreme sycophant of the Ceausescu era."

A member of the Union of Communist Youth between 1966 and 1968, and, between 1968 and 1989, of the Romanian Communist Party, Păunescu gained control over a major weekly publication, Flacăra and became the producer and host of the only itinerant folk and pop show in the country, Cenaclul Flacăra, founded in 1973. He was a member of the Romanian Communist Party Central Committee and "court poet" of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.