'Imagine,' Sepetys says, 'speaking in whispers, constantly looking over your shoulder, never knowing whom you can trust.' In this book, she opens a startling window into the real-life coerced citizen spy network-including teenagers as young as thirteen-that bred an atmosphere of paranoia and fear, as people were forced to inform on one another. Ruta is passionate about the power of history and fiction to foster awareness and connectivity. A winner of the Carnegie Medal, a prestigious British literary award, Sepetys has made presentations to NATO, European Parliament, and before Congress on the ability of young adult literature to 'create pathways for global dialogue.' Sepetys is considered a “crossover” writer whose work is read by both adults and younger readers. Want more stories to inspire you to live your best life? Sign up to become an Oprah Insider!

The story feels as if it could be a far-fetched premise for a film or novel, but it was real and not many are familiar with the history,' she tells Oprah Daily. Nicolae Ceaușescu not only manipulated the Romanian population, he secretly manipulated the leaders of many countries, including the United States. Imagine constantly being watched and feeling hunted. “The terror and pressure they experienced was real and incredibly intense.

In writing the book, Sepetys drew from the testimonies of actual witnesses. There, she met many survivors of the regime who had put everything on the line to oppose Ceaușescu, who Mikhail Gorbachev dubbed “the Romanian fuhrer”-a staunch communist who refused to implement the reforms that were happening in many other parts of the region in the '80s. Sepetys’s father fled communist Lithuania at age four and spent the next nine years in refugee camps, but it didn't occur to her to explore the theme in her fiction until she visited Romania while on tour to promote her debut novel, Between Shades of Gray, in 2011. Its 17-year-old protagonist, Cristian, has been blackmailed by the secret police into becoming an informant on his friends and family, but risks his life to covertly fight for freedom.

I Must Betray You (Philomel) is set in Romania in the late 1980s amid the brutal dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Internationally acclaimed #1 New York Times-bestselling novelist Ruta Sepetys, whose Salt To The Sea was named to the Time’s list of 100 Best YA Books ever, will release a new historical thriller in February 2022, Oprah Daily reveals exclusively.

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