Mircea Zaciu

Born into a Greek-Catholic family in Oradea,[1][2] his parents were Adrian Zaciu, a lawyer, and his wife Otilia (née Muth), a high school secretary.

Beginning in his fourth year, Zaciu worked as an associate instructor at the Romanian literature department,[1] under the supervision of Dumitru Popovici.

In 1970, his contract was not renewed and he was fired from the position of chairman within the contemporary Romanian literature and literary theory department, a post he had held since 1967.

He moved to Germany in 1990, but spent lengthy periods in Romania, and from that time was honorary director of Vatra magazine, based in Târgu Mureș.

He conceived and edited the volumes Ceasuri de seară cu Ion Agârbiceanu (1982) and Liviu Rebreanu după un veac (1985).

His essays, invariably researched with care, had a marked ability to evoke the socio-literary environment of the period they describe, and to draw characters.

In his writings, the archival sensibilities of the Cluj critical school merged with the example of George Călinescu; in his vision, literary history became a sui generis "novel" in which an era, a number of representative figures and "scenes" came alive.

[2] His talent for fiction was less developed, but a fine example of his prose can be found in Teritorii, the journalistic account of his German stay, together with impressions of Paris during the turbulent year 1968 as well as London.

The diary is a valuable document for reconstituting the somber and hopeless atmosphere of those years, with special attention devoted to the writers' milieu.