Moldova sits at the neglected edge of European literature, but a handful of books cast real light on what it means to live in one of the continent's most overlooked corners.
The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov (translated by Ross Ufberg) is the place to start. This darkly comic Moldovan novel follows a group of villagers desperate to migrate to Italy by any means necessary — on tractors, in lorries, in improbable schemes. It is savage, funny, and tells you more about the desperation and humour of rural Moldova than any guidebook.
The Transnistria Travelogue — there is no single canonical book on this region, but Charles King's academic history The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture provides essential context on the identity tug-of-war that shaped the country and still defines Soroca's border-town atmosphere. It is dense but rewarding.
Isabel Fonseca's Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey is not about Moldova specifically, but it is the best English-language account of Roma culture in Eastern Europe. Reading it before wandering through Ţigănia gives the neighbourhood's eccentric mansions a far richer meaning.
Dracula by Bram Stoker is set in the Carpathian region just across the border and is worth a reread for atmosphere. Soroca's limestone bluffs, its fortress, and the mist that rises off the Dniester in the morning have a gothic quality that Stoker would have recognised immediately.