Once 'the Paris of the East', Bucharest in 1989 is a world of danger, repression and corruption, but also of intensity and ravaged beauty. As Ceausescu's demolition squads race to destroy the old city and replace it with a sinister Stalinist Legoland, its inhabitants live out communism's dying days not knowing how or where things will end. ln 'The Last Hundred Days' a young English student arrives in Bucharest to take up a job he never applied for and whose duties are never made clear. He finds dissidents, party apparatchiks, black-marketeers, diplomats, spies and ordinary Romanians, all watching each other as Europe's most paranoid regime plays out its bloody endgame, Patrick McGuinness, poet and Professor of Literature at
Oxford University, lived in Romania in the years leading up
to the revolution. This is his first novel.

'stunning' - The Times
'an assured performance' - Literary Review
'Sinister, comic and lyrical, it vividly captures the end of a
long mghtmare' - i-newspaper
'...engrossing debut novel... '* * * * - Time Out
'...the sardonic crispness and evocative power of its language distinguishes it from the run of contemporary fiction.' - Sean O'Brien, TLS
'McGuinness is an accomplished poet and writes with superb clarity.' - Independent
' ... observant, reflective, witty and precise ... an incisive and
engaging account of a society and a historical period that is
essential to remember.' - The New York Times