Gabriela Adame\u015fteanu was born in T\u00e2rgu Ocna, Romania, in 1942. She studied Romanian language and literature at the University of Bucharest and worked as an editor for publishers of literature and reference works. In 1990, she became a member of the Group for Social Dialogue (GDS), the first Romanian NGO. Having trained as a journalist in Berlin, Vienna, and Brussels, from 1998 to 2001 she ran \u00bb22\u00ab, a political, social, economic and cultural weekly edited by the GDS, and was a member of \u00bbWomen\u2019s Edition\u00ab (1998-2001), an international association of female editors and journalists. In 2002, she received the Hellman-Hammett grant from Human Rights Watch in recognition of her advocacy work. As president of the Romanian PEN, she was a writer in residence in the USA (Iowa City, 1990; Ledig House, 2004) and France (Arles, 2000; Saint-Nazaire, 2004).
Adame\u015fteanu\u2019s first novel, \u00bbDrumul egal al fiec\u0103rei zile\u00ab (1975; tr: The Equal Way of Every Day), describes daily life in the sixties, alternating between the themes of a young girl\u2019s \u00bb\u00e9ducation sentimentale\u00ab and success and failure in life. Some of the short stories in the collections \u00bbD\u0103ruie\u015fte-\u0163i o zi de vacant\u0103\u00ab (1979; tr: Give Yourself a Holiday) and \u00bbVara-primavara\u00ab (1989, tr: \u00bbSummer-Spring\u00ab), talk about the feeling of hopelessness in the later years of the Ceau\u015fescu regime and have been published in Russian, German, Austrian, Hungarian and Estonian anthologies. Her most well-known work, \u00bbDiminea\u0163a Pierdut\u0103\u00ab (1983; Eng. \u00bbWasted Morning\u00ab, 2011), provided the story for one of Romania\u2019s most successful plays. With a strong sense of the idioms and attitudes of different social classes and personalities, Adame\u015fteanu juxtaposes individual destinies and collective tragedy and creates a polyphonic portrait of her country in the 20th century. Her novel \u00bb\u00cent\u00e2lnirea\u00ab (2003; Eng. \u00bbThe Encounter\u00ab, 2016) is a modern answer to Homer\u2019s \u00bbOdyssey\u00ab and focuses on an immigrant\u2019s difficulties in communicating with his home country that has been isolated from the world by years of dictatorship. \u00bbProvizorat\u00ab (2010, tr: Provisional Solution) is a historical novel that reconstructs life in Ceau\u015fescu\u2019s Romania in the 1970s.
Adame\u015fteanu has been internationally honored many times for her work. In 2014, she was made a Chevalier de L\u2019Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She has translated Maupassant and Bianciotti into Romanian. Her journalistic pieces have appeared in, among others, \u00bbObsesia politicii\u00ab (1995, tr: The Passion of Politics) and \u00bbCele dou\u0103 Rom\u00e2nii\u00ab (2001; tr: The Two Romanias). She lives in Bucharest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13798,"template":"","jct-role":[1080],"jct-origin":[506],"jct-ilb-years":[600,612],"class_list":["post-39689","authors","type-authors","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","jct-role-author","jct-origin-romania","jct-ilb-years-2006-en","jct-ilb-years-2018-en"],"yoast_head":"\n