Cezar Petrescu

Born Dec. 1, 1892, in Hodora, in Iaşi District; died Mar. 9, 1961, in Bucharest. Rumanian writer. Academician of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Rumania (1955).

Petrescu wrote many novels, including Gathering Clouds (1927; translated into Russian as The Downfall, 1963), Victory Street (1931; Russian translation, 1972), No Forwarding Address (1932), Black Gold (1933; Russian translation, 1958), and The Apostle (1933; Russian translation, 1958). The novels, which were intended as a Rumanian chronicle of the 20th century, sharply criticized Rumanian bourgeois society. Petrescu also wrote 1907 (1938-43), a trilogy about a peasant uprising. After Rumania was liberated from fascism in 1944, Petrescu wrote the novel People of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, a condensed version of his Rumanian chronicle. Among the Soviet writers he translated were M. Gorky, M. A. Sholokhov, and A. N. Tolstoy. Petrescu was awarded the State Prize of the Socialist Republic of Rumania.