Lola Lafon: La Petite Communiste qui ne souriait jamais | The Little Communist Who Never Smiled (2014)

Lola Lafon's La Petite Communiste who ne souriait jamais is a mixture of historical inquiry and fiction, with a number of imaginary conversations in italics between the author (who by the way spent some of her youth in Romania) and the protagonist: Nadia Comăneci, the fourteen-year-old Romanian girl who stunned the world in a pre-internet age when television and hard copy newspapers ruled the media.

To call the young Comăneci, from the small town of Onești, a 'communist' is of course as much of an absurdity as calling the tyrant President Nicolae Ceaușescu a communist: but then, the word 'communist' sells books, although Lola Lafon seems to be perfectly aware that the brave new 'post-communist' eastern bloc countries are undergoing huge problems with capitalism.

Nadia Comăneci's managers don't come out of this too well, starving their girls in order for them to perform huge gymnastic feats, prolonging their puberty, spying on them to make sure they're not eating or drinking too much, etc.

Nadia leaves Romania as soon as possible (on Ceaușescu's downfall), later marries a US citizen and becomes a US citizen herself. The book doesn't continue much beyond that: it's only a partial, but fictionalised, biography.