from Kombinat: Industrial Ruins of the Golden Era, courtesy igloo heritage

When I went to Romania shortly before the downfall of the Ceauşescu regime, the Romanians (to judge by the displays in the bookshops) seemed to be a nation of stereochemists: for displayed to the exclusion of almost everything else in the bookshop windows was a volume entitled The Stereospecific Characterization of Isoprene. Perhaps the authorship, or the alleged authorship, of this volume explained its strange popularity: that of Elena Ceauşescu, Doctor of Science and Member of the Romanian Academy.

I did not know why the dictator’s wife had chosen chemistry as the realm of her supposed genius and world-fame. Nevertheless, I considered buying a copy, but then thought better of it. Surely any assistant in a bookshop would suspect me of wanting to expose it to satire, ridicule, and mockery on my return home? In a totalitarian society, ...

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