A British writer’s secret island in the Carpathian mountains

Arabella McIntyre-Brown, a British writer and publisher, moved to an isolated village in Transylvania, where she organizes workshops, writes non-fiction and crime novels and watches the world go by. After I read an article about Arabella McIntyre-Brown, a British writer who lives up in the mountains of Transylvania, in the village of Magura, I decided to write her and ask her for an interview. I really wanted to meet this woman who seemed to descend from a fantasy novel, judging by her eccentric appearance and witty, melancholic smile. The article was saying that she wrote a book about Liverpool’s history and that she was an award-winning business journalist, but deep down I was certain that she is a person in love with fiction, maybe secretly drafting a new Harry Potter book. Arabella agreed to meet, so on a Saturday morning, mid-June, I got off the train in Zarnesti, the nearest town to Magura and started to walk the way up to the village. People in the town said that there might be dogs on the road and that it will probably start raining, so I’d better take a cab. I decided, however, to walk. It was a narrow, rocky road, surrounded by forests, where a car would pass by once in a while. All the fears seemed unjustified, as there were no dogs and no heavy storm, but it was damn heavy going up that road. When I reached Magura, after an hour-long walk through, I was struck by the beauty and silence of it. It is a scattered village on several hills, surrounded by mountains, including the Piatra Craiului Mountains, and hills. The smell of wild flowers was sneaking from everywhere. Arabella was expecting me in front of her timber house, and next to her there was a cat playing in the grass. “He’s Mouse,” Arabella introduced him. She is wearing a blue shirt, light cotton trousers and a golden necklace. The walls of the entrance hall are painted in light blue, and it feels like a Mediterranean house, a sort of island lost in the middle of the mountains. Arabella tells me that she once found the neighbours’ sheep right there, “all five standing there on that rug”. They took advantage of her leaving the house for a few moments, and thought they might pay her a visit.