Panait Istrati

Born in Brăila, Istrati was the son of the laundress Joița Istrate and of the Greek tobacco trader Georgios Valsamis from the village of Faraklata in Kefalonia.

His first attempts at writing date from around 1907 when he started sending pieces to the socialist periodicals in Romania, debuting with the article, Hotel Regina in România Muncitoare.

Istrati's travels were marked by two successive unhappy marriages, a brief return to Romania in 1915 when he tried to earn his living as a hog farmer, and long periods of vagabondage.

While in the sanatorium, Istrati met Russian Jewish-Swiss Zionist writer Josué Jéhouda, who became his friend and French language tutor.

Rolland was fascinated with Istrati's adventurous life, urging him to write more and publishing parts of his work in Clarté, the magazine that he and Henri Barbusse owned.

He was joined in Moscow by his future close friend, Nikos Kazantzakis; while in the city, Panait Istrati met Victor Serge and expressed his wish to become a citizen of the Soviet Union.

Through extended visits in more remote places such as the Moldavian ASSR (where he got in touch with his friend Ecaterina Arbore), Nizhny Novgorod, Baku, and Batumi, Istrati learned the full truth of Stalin's communist dictatorship, out of which experience he wrote his famous book, The Confession of a Loser, the first in the succession of disenchantments expressed by intellectuals such as Arthur Koestler and André Gide.

He was still closely watched by the Romanian secret police (Siguranța Statului), and he had written an article (dated April 8, 1933) in the French magazine Les Nouvelles littéraires, aptly titled L'homme qui n'adhère à rien ("The man who will adhere to nothing").

At the same time, Istrati started publishing in Cruciada Românismului ("The Crusade of Romanianism"), the voice of a left-leaning splinter group of the ultra-nationalist Iron Guard.