Two Queens and a Chronicler
by Alta Ifland
"Two Queens and a Chronicler" is an atypical historical novel inspired by the lives of Romania's queens, Elisabeta (1843-1916) and Marie (1875-1938). Written entirely as a dialogue between three women-the two queens and their chronicler, a contemporary Romanian-born American writer-the novel enacts a conversation between the past and the present during which the queens reflect on events both from their era and our time, politics, the two great wars, love, art, beauty, life, death, and other royals, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. One of them originally from Germany and the other from Great Britain, a granddaughter to Queen Victoria, the two queens share something with their chronicler: they are immigrant female writers. Their ongoing conversation offers the bits and pieces of a fascinating puzzle.
Alta Ifland was born and grew up in Communist Romania. She came to the US in 1991, has a PhD in French language and literature, and translates from/into Romanian, French, and English. Her collection of prose poems, Voix de glace/Voice of ice, which she has translated from French, won the 2008 Louis Guillaume Prize (a French prize), and her novel, The Wife Who Wasn’t, a satirical comedy about Moldovans versus Californians in a post-Communist world, came out in 2021. Speaking to No. 4, her second novel, was published in 2022. Currently, she lives in France.
