Mircea Eliade, a leading scholar of religions and an acclaimed novelist, was a prominent member of the generation of 1927 that became active in Romania during the late 1920s and dominated the cultural scene throughout the 1930s and most of the 1940s. This generation was the first to receive its education in the "Greater Romania" that emerged from World War I.

Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania, to a family that had strong Romanian roots. (Though he and his family always celebrated his birthday on 9 March, his biographer Mac Linscott Ricketts has reported the discovery of official records listing his birthdate as 13 March 1907.) Eliade's father, Gheorghe Eliade, was an army officer and a native of Moldavia. His mother, Ioana Stoian Vasile Eliade, was a native of the western region of Oltenia, whose people were considered ambitious, pragmatic, and energetic. Eliade thought of himself as a synthesis of contemplation...