High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Ruritania is a fictional country in central Europe which forms the setting for three books by Anthony Hope: The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), The Heart of Princess Osra (1896), and Rupert of Hentzau (1898). Although the first and third are set in the recent past—usually reckoned to be the 1870s—the second is set in the 1730s, although it refers to subsequent events that happened between that time and the time of writing.