Travelling with friends through Romania in 1979, Helena Drysdale met George Cupar, an Orthodox priest-poet. They drank wine in Transylvanian forests and, avoiding the secret police, camped together beneath the Carpathian moon. When she returned home, George wrote her letters full of criticism of the Romanian regime, and asked her to marry him and to help him escape. Abruptly the letters stopped. After the revolution in 1989 Helena Drysdale returned to Romania, a country trapped in a labyrinth of post-Communist paranoia, in search of George.

'This real-life search for a lost face through the cruel and frightened maze of Ceausescu's Romania is a moving, beautifully told, and haunting narrative' Patrick Leigh Fermor

'An intriguing and unusual book, shot through with poignant memories: at once detective story, travelogue, portrait of post-Communist Romania and tribute to a remarkable young man. Helena Drysdale is someone who travels thoughtfully, not just with an open mind but with an active conscience too' Independent on Sunday

'Beautifully written and bristling with dramatic tension, this is one of those rare books that, having started, you really can't put down' Marie Claire