Adamesteanu's father was a passionate and dedicated high school teacher of history who had been the director of the high school in Tîrgu-Ocna. Because he had been a member of the Social-Democrat Party after World War II-one brother was also a political prisoner and another a refugee in Italy after the communist takeover of Romania-he had to take a lower position in Pitesti, a town in southern Romania. Mircea Adamesteanu came from an enlightened and progressive family that instilled in both Adamesteanu and her younger brother, Ion, the importance of education as well as the significance of their family heritage. Adamesteanu has always been proud of her family and was extremely attached to her father, who died in 1965 at age fifty-four.
Adamesteanu spent her formative years in Pitesti, where her parents had moved in 1946. In high school she began to demonstrate her literary talent and received a humanistic education despite the extremely politicized situation of the time, imbued as it was with Soviet values. From 1960 to 1965 Adamesteanu attended the Faculty of Romanian Language and Literature in Bucharest and was a part of the first generation of students who were no longer absolutely conditioned by the "social origin" of their parents.
