We’re thrilled to reveal the cover for The Last Patient by Alexander Tudor, to be released as a paperback, hardback, and e-book worldwide on February 18.
THE LAST PATIENT is a sweeping historical novel that captures one family’s struggle for love, survival, and identity under the grip of Communism in Romania. Spanning fifty years of political upheaval, this saga explores how ordinary lives are shaped—and sometimes shattered—by extraordinary times.
Kostea and Clara meet and fall in love shortly before World War II. As they get married, build careers, and raise a son, the world around them changes rapidly—and often violently. From the two-bedroom apartment they are “patriotically” forced to share with another family, to Bucharest’s rampant food shortages, Romania’s Cold War history plays out in their day-to-day lives.
Kostea, a charming yet domineering surgeon, craves control in a place where party loyalists hold the reins of power. His pursuit of respect and authority threatens his promising medical career and his relationships at home, risking Clara’s love. While the temptation to break through the Iron Curtain is omnipresent, defection to the West comes with its own uncertainties. Ultimately, THE LAST PATIENT is a poignant exploration of oppression, personal aspirations, and love.
Advance Praise for THE LAST PATIENT
Tudor Alexander’s The Last Patient offers a vivid, often poignant portrait of one family enduring and emerging from the dark period of Ceausescu’s regime in Romania. At once intimate and sweeping in scope, the novel evokes the specifics of time and place through deeply atmospheric prose and dialogue that rings utterly true. With both clarity and compassion, Alexander depicts the dreams and desires, strengths and frailties of each of his characters. As they navigate the convolutions of Communist rule and the even greater complexities of the heart, they variously cling to and relinquish hopes and expectations, and make tenuous deals with others, and with themselves. —Lauren Goodsmith, Founder, Intercultural Counseling Connection; author, The Children of Mauritania, The Path of the Sun.
The Last Patient is a beautifully written, absorbing account of one family’s life in Romania under Communism. Focusing on the father, a noted surgeon, this novel shows the forces that drive even those who love their homeland to leave it and start their lives over. A moving story populated with rigorously delineated characters, The Last Patient is an especially important book now, when immigration to the United States is increasingly misunderstood.
—J. Wynn Rousuck, author of Please Write: A Novel in Letters and award-winning Theater Critic at WYPR, Baltimore’s NPR Affiliate
About the Author
Alex Duvan lives in Columbia, Maryland, and publishes under the pen name Tudor Alexander.
Alex started writing in high school, and enjoyed an early success, publishing many short stories in established literary magazines in Bucharest, Romania. Since he came to the US as a political refugee in 1977, his writing has been informed and inspired by his personal immigration experience. Although writing was his passion, he studied engineering and management to support his family. After the fall of the Berlin wall and the Romanian Revolution in 1989, he published several novels and short story collections in Romania, including The Runners, Smoke, Planet New York, One Morning and One Afternoon, and The Visitor.
Planet New York, his first novel written in English and published in the US, received an Honorable Mention at the 2007 New York Book Festival. He published his second novel in English, No Portrait in the Gilded Frame, in 2016.Alex’s short story, Somewhere in the City received an Honorable Mention at Glimmer Train’s Spring 2017 short story contest.
He is a member of the Maryland Writers’ Alliance and serves on the board of directors of the Little Patuxent Review, a biannual Maryland literary publication. For more information on his literary activity, please check his website at www.tudoralexander.com or www.alexduvan.com. His blog, at medium.com/@alexduvan, includes short stories and excerpts from his novels.