Screwed: Dancing with the Generals

This intriguing memoir takes you inside Ceausescu’s Romania, where Sergiu Viorel Urma was the sole reporter for the Associated Press from 1974 through 1987.

Urma’s narration begins in May 2014, when he returned to his native country for a chance to see the dossier compiled by the Securitate, Romania’s version of the Soviet KGB. It had taken him nine years to access his folder. And now, he cannot believe his eyes…

Urma goes on to chronicle his eventful career path, taking readers back to his senior year at Bucharest University, the same year Moscow and its Eastern Bloc allies-with the exception of Romania-invade Czechoslovakia to stifle the Prague Spring.

In 1973, after a twenty-three-year period during which the Associated Press did not have a reporter in Romania, the agency opens a Bucharest bureau and hires Urma as an assistant. The following year, he becomes the only reporter working for a Western agency in the country-and the West is very curious to know what Ceausescu is up to…

The newly surfaced dossier sheds light on Urma’s time as a reporter in Romania, highlighting just how dangerous the political climate was during this fascinating chapter of modern history.