The Last Hundred Days: Book summary and reviews of The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness

The Last Hundred Days Summary

Once the gleaming "Paris of the East," Bucharest in 1989 is a world of corruption and paranoia, in thrall to the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Old landmarks are falling to demolition crews, grocery shelves are empty, and informants are everywhere. Into this state of crisis, a young British man arrives to take a university post he never interviewed for. He is taken under the wing of Leo O'Heix, a colleague and master of the black market, and falls for the sleek Celia, daughter of a party apparatchik. Yet he soon learns that in this society, friendships are compromised, and loyalty is never absolute. And as the regime's authority falters, he finds himself uncomfortably, then dangerously, close to the eye of the storm.

By turns thrilling and satirical, studded with poetry and understated revelation, The Last Hundred Days captures the commonplace terror of Cold War Eastern Europe. Patrick McGuinness's first novel is unforgettable.

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The Last Hundred Days Reviews

"McGuinness was himself in Bucharest just prior to the fall of the regime, and his observations have the unmistakeable scent of authenticity. This is a novel that rages and flows by turn, but rarely disappoints." - The Independent (UK)

"The prose is often workaday-thriller ('I slept late and woke in sunlight so hot the blood bubbled inside my eyelids'), some of the characters generic. But McGuinness has reacted to the city with a kind of poetic intensity, and his fictional world expresses this." - Spectator (UK)

"A clunky debut lacking suspense." - Kirkus Reviews

"There are shortcomings... the most interesting character after the city itself, disappears halfway; and Leo's pontifications... underscore the ironies too heavily. Still, the novel is stylish and of lasting value to readers interested in the twilight of the Eastern Bloc." - Publishers Weekly

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Patrick McGuinness was born in Tunisia in 1968 and lived in Bucharest in the years leading up to the Romanian revolution. He is a professor of French and comparative literature at Oxford University and a fellow of St. Anne's College. As a poet, he has won an Eric Gregory Award and Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize. His latest collection, Jilted City, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The Last Hundred Days was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. McGuinness lives between Oxford and North West Wales.