In a Romanian mountain town still marked by the past dictatorship, two young people from completely different worlds experience the miracle of love.

TANZENDE FRAU, BLAUER HAHN
(Dancing Woman, Blue Rooster)
by Dana Grigorcea
Penguin Verlag/PRH Germany, March 2026

In 1990s Romania, the dust of socialism still hasn’t quite yet settled. Every summer Roxana and Camil meet in the small town of Busteni in the Carpathian Mountains: she is there on holiday, while he lives on the other side of the tracks. They observe the town’s couples, take inspiration from them and try to discover their secrets: from the successful lawyer who removes her roof when a tree starts growing through her house, to the chalk-and-cheese engineering couple who suffer from the same ailment, to the local beauty who looks like a TV star, who has found love with an unremarkable-seeming man. And with each successive summer, Roxana and Camil’s own story develops too – until they realise that they can only ever be a guest in each other’s lives.

Light as a feather yet profound, TANZENDE FRAU, BLAUER HAHN is a kaleidoscope of love and what it takes for it to take root. A novel about desires unexpectedly fulfilled, opportunities that pass by unnoticed – and how the wheel of life carries on turning regardless.

Dana Grigorcea was born in Bucharest in 1979, she is a Germanist and Dutchist and has lived with her family in Zurich for many years. The Romanian-Swiss author’s works have been translated into several languages and have received numerous awards such as the Ingeborg Bachmann/3sat Award. Her novel « Those Who Never Die » won the 2022 Swiss Book Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 German Book Prize. Dana Grigorcea is a recipient of the Romanian Order of Cultural Merit with the rank of Knight.