Ana Blandiana's
career as a poet began with the publication of First Person Plural in 1964. Since then, she has published 11 volumes of poetry, as well as prose, fiction, translations and children's fiction. Over the years, she has become equally celebrated for her writing and for her criticism of the Ceausescu regime, the latter resulting in a ban in 1988 on the publication of her work, and her virtual house arrest. Her importance in the Romanian literary scene is expressed by the editors of her first collection published in English (The Hour of Sand, Anvil Press 1990): 'Literature is a collective refuge, a way of survival. In the strategies of this survival, Blandiana has been a model of unswerving consciousness.'
Since the fall of Ceausescu in December 1989, she has published little new work, but has devoted herself to politics, being a founder member of the umbrella democracy movement, the Civic Alliance, which is allied to the political party of the same name (the main rival to the ruling National Salvation Front). 'The open window' is her first new story to be published since December 1989. It first appeared in Romania Literara (Bucharest).
