Ruth Sepetys' I Must Betray You is a historical thriller set in communist Romania during the late 1980s. The young-adult novel focuses on the "citizen spy network" that emerged during the fall of Soviet regimes, following seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu, an aspiring writer blackmailed into informing for the dictatorship. The harrowing dystopian conditions culminate in a youth-led revolution against Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.
I Must Betray You was published by Philomel in 2022. It is Ruta Sepetys' fifth novel. Sepetys was inspired to write the story while on tour in Romania for her first book, Between Shades of Gray, when a colleague who survived Soviet occupation explained the long-lasting consequences of surveillance. Though Cristian Florescu's narrative is fictional, the novel touches on true events and leans on extensive historical research and interviews with survivors, giving voice to an era defined by silence.
