One of Romania's leading contemporary historians, Lucian Boia has been one of the few after 1989 to advocate a demythologization of the Romanian past. In his first groundbreaking book History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, which has gone through several international editions, he deconstructed the “imaginary” of Romania's past as a matter of myths and competing discourses.11. Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest and New York: Central European UP, 2001) 29–30.View all notesHis critical interpretation provoked a rethinking of Romanian national identity and additionally contributed to a reorientation towards contemporary methodological developments in Western historiography. Among them, the French Annales School had a particular impact on Boia's thinking, which also explains why his recent works were first published in French and subsequently translated into Romanian and other languages.