The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness

McGuinness translates his real life experiences in Romania in the waning days of the Ceausescu regime into this book, which is an on-the-edge-of-your-chair thriller that does what it's title claims walking the reader through the very bitter end of the most repressive regime in Eastern Europe.

The story is told through the eyes of a British national who is an invited professor at a Bucharest university.  He quickly gets lapped up by those who are eager for change, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that what is happening is not communism but rather totalitarianism, with an aim to starve it's people all the while providing for the well being of the leaders.  Romania was a place of untold horrors, and this book is a roller coaster ride through just a few of them.  We really never get to know the characters in any depth--this is not a book that allows us inside the lives of the people who suffered.  It is rather a litany of their pain, amplified by Ceausescu's desperate attempts to avoid the inevitable, but more of a thriller than an intimate portrait.  I prefer the later as a literary style, but this is a very quick read that takes one through the Ceausescu regime tactics, and those who fought back against them.  The book shows none of the bitter dark humor that you find in Romanian films--this is an outsiders view in, and nicely done for what it is.