Oana Aristide
RomaniaAbout
Oana Aristide is a Romanian-born writer whose work explores political history, human psychology, and the fragile boundaries between reality and imagination. Born in Transylvania to parents of Romanian, Greek, and Yemeni heritage, she spent her childhood in communist Romania before her family emigrated to Sweden following the fall of the regime. Before becoming a novelist, Aristide pursued a varied career, working as a macroeconomist in London, a cabinet adviser in Bucharest, a travel journalist, and a hotelier on the Greek island of Syros. Her international experiences and personal connection to Romania’s communist past inform her literary perspective. Her debut novel, Under the Blue, was published in 2021 and was named one of The Times‘s best books of the year. The novel combines psychological suspense with speculative fiction to explore humanity’s response to an environmental catastrophe. Her second novel, Astronaut! (2026), returns to the atmosphere of her childhood, portraying the final years of Ceaușescu’s dictatorship through a blend of crime fiction, political satire, and coming-of-age storytelling. Aristide currently lives in Sweden.
