Just before WW II Olivia Manning married a British Council lecturer, and the pair moved to Bucharest. Their experiences formed the basis for the epic novel The Balkan Trilogy. This book was first published by William Heinemann Ltd. in 1960-1965 and then in the US by Penguin Books in 1974. The copy I have was published by Penguin Books in 1988 (ISBN 0 14 01.0996 X).

The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy form a single narrative entitled Fortunes of War. Anthony Burgess, writing in the Sunday Times, described it as:

...the finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer. Her gallery of personages is huge, her scene painting superb, her pathos controlled, her humor quiet and civilized. Guy Pringle certainly is one of the major characters in modern fiction.

Parts of the Balkan Trilogy were used for the Mobil Masterpiece Theater television presentation, "The Fortunes of War". The TV adaptation is not as good as the original book.