What This Book Is About
Bucharest, 1989. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, even owning a typewriter is suspicious. The secret police, the Securitate, are everywhere—in the schools, the churches, the apartment buildings. One in every ten Romanians is an informer.
When the Securitate corners Cristian and forces him to spy on a foreign diplomat staying at a nearby hotel, he faces an impossible choice: betray a stranger to protect his family, or refuse and watch the people he loves suffer the consequences. As Cristian is drawn deeper into the web of surveillance and lies, he discovers that everyone around him—his friends, his teachers, even his own family—may be hiding secrets of their own. Set during the final months before the Romanian Revolution, Ruta Sepetys (author of Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea) delivers a thriller that reads like a spy novel but hits like a history lesson: this actually happened, to real people, within living memory.
Available at Popular bookstores, Kinokuniya, and the Singapore National Library.
Why We Recommend This Book
I Must Betray You immerses students in a surveillance state—an experience that feels increasingly relevant in an era of digital privacy debates and social media monitoring. The novel forces students to grapple with moral complexity: when every choice leads to someone getting hurt, what does "doing the right thing" even mean?
For UWC students studying modern history, this book brings the fall of communism in Eastern Europe to visceral life. It also connects to broader UWC themes of human rights, freedom of expression, and the courage it takes to resist authoritarian systems from within.
Reading Level Guide
Challenging at B1. Build confidence with B1-level books first, then return to this.
Perfect difficulty. Challenging enough to grow, accessible enough to enjoy.
Comfortable read at C1. Great for pleasure reading or thematic exploration.
Other UWC Recommended Books for This Grade
Not sure if this book is right for your child? Take our free English assessment to find their CEFR level, then choose books that match.