Ion Agârbiceanu

Ion Agârbiceanu was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian writer, journalist, politician, theologian and Greek-Catholic priest. Born among the Romanian peasant class of Transylvania, he was originally an Orthodox, but chose to embrace Eastern Catholicism. Assisted by the Catholic congregation of Blaj, he graduated from Budapest University, after which he was ordained. Agârbiceanu was initially assigned to a parish in the Apuseni Mountains, which form the backdrop to much of his fiction. Before 1910, Agârbiceanu had achieved literary fame in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Romania, affiliating with Astra cultural society in 1912; his work was disputed between the rival schools of Sămănătorul and Poporanism. After a debut in poetry, he became a highly prolific author of novels, novellas, and other forms of prose, being rated as "Chekhovian" or "Tolstoyan" for his talents in describing the discreet suffering of common folk.