I. L. (Ion Luca) Caragiale

Born in 1852 in what is now Romania, Ion Luca Caragiale became one of the country's best-known playwrights, as well as a short story writer, journalist, political commentator, and theater manager. He worked in and around the theater from a young age, and that firsthand feel for performance helped shape the quick pace and vivid voices of his writing.

Caragiale is especially remembered for satirical comedies such as A Lost Letter, A Stormy Night, and Carnival Scenes. His work poked fun at political ambition, public hypocrisy, and the comic confusion of a society changing fast, yet he wrote with enough wit and human understanding that the characters still feel alive today.

Later in life he spent time in Berlin, where he died in 1912. More than a century after his death, he is still widely regarded as a central figure in Romanian literature and the country's greatest dramatist.