“Writer and philosopher Stelian Turlea based his crime fiction ‘Greuceanu’ on a well-known Romanian fairytale, in which the eponymous hero battles with a number of Zmei [ogres], to bring back to the skies the sun which they had stolen. The novel transposes the fairytale to the reality of a provincial town which has been taken over by gangsters, now the town's masters. Greuceanu is a young policeman, at the bottom of the ladder. By chance, he gets rid of one of the feared gangsters, whose brothers and their wives come after him. With the unerring instinct of a popular children’s author, Turlea locates, in Greuceanu, one of the major Pan-European issues in contemporary times, the problem of organised crime. Turlea’s villains are not moustachioed banditos. Instead they are the brothers and sisters of gangsters in every European city centre, and playing as he does with the characters of the town, he explores a number of insights into the role of organised crime in post-Accession civic life.” (Mike Phillips, CWA Silver Dagger winner and author of Rîmaru - Butcher of Bucharest)
Author
Born in January 1946, Stelian Ţurlea studied Philology (1968) and Philosophy (1976) in Bucharest. For nearly three decades, he has been editor on external affairs editor (“Lumea” magazine). After 1989, he has coordinated “Lumea”, “Zig-Zag”, and “Meridian” magazines, and worked in television as Head of Antena 1 News Department. He has been working for ProTV since 1996 and, since 2000, he has been a senior editor for “Ziarul de duminică”. He is the author of eighteen novels, ten books on journalism, nine books for children and two translations. He has coordinated six photo albums (a three-volume album about Bucharest during Carol I; other albums: The public works during Carol I; The Palace of the Patriarchy; The Royal Palace; B.N.R. – Chronicle of the Old Palace Restoration; The Financial-Banking, Historical Centre of Bucharest). He received the Writers’ Union Award for Children's Literature (2003), the Romanian Editors’ Association Award for Children's Literature (2005), the Writers’ Union Special Award (2006) and the Bucharest Writers’ Association Award (2007), Flacăra Prize for Literature (2011). He was nominated for the Writers’ Union Award for Children Literature in 2000 and the AER Novel Award in 2003.
