Romania, a guest of honour at the International Bookfair in Leipzig
Twenty years on, Romania is again a guest of honour at the International Book Fair in Leipzig, Germany
România Internațional, 15.03.2018, 14:10
This year, Romania is a guest of honour at the International Bookfair in Leipzig, Germany, a major European book and reading promotion event and one of the oldest of this kind in the world. In his opening speech, the Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu recalled that our country had been granted the same status 20 years earlier, in 1998. Back then, almost half a decade since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, Romanian culture was looking for ways of restoring its European and international cultural prestige.
Today, when Romania is celebrating 100 years since the creation of modern Romania, and is preparing to take over the presidency of the EU Council, the relationship between Romania and Germany is characterized by intense political dialogue, solid cooperation at European level and a strong partnership within NATO. At the current edition of the fair, underway between the 15th and the 18th of March, the public will be introduced to Romanian authors such as Mircea Cartarescu, Norman Manea, Nora Iuga and Filip Florian, whose works have already been published in German, but also to younger authors, such as Lavinia Braniste and Bogdan Alexandru Stanescu.
More than 40 translations from Romanian literature will be presented at the fair, mainly with support from the National Book Centre of the Romanian Cultural Institute.
In an interview on Radio Romania Culture, the curator of Romanias programme in Lepzig, Ioana Gruenwald, talked about the selection of the books translated for the current edition of the fair: “The range is quite broad and varied, including authors who have already built a reputation, such as Gabriela Adamesteanu, Florin Lazarescu and Matei Visniec. But we also have some daring proposals, so to say, as, for instance, a very small publishing house decided to publish Lavinia Braniste.
“Zoom in: Romania in Lepzig is the motto under which some 70 events will be held at Romanias stand and in other debate venues, aimed at promoting Romanian contemporary authors. Among them, the show “Border in a knapsack by Ada Milea, on lyrics translated into German by Herta Muller, winner in 2009 of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Other interesting events include the Romanian – German poetry reading, titled “The world seen in a verse, a marathon of public readings gathering thirteen Romanian contemporary poets alongside two German poets from the new generation, preceded by an art performance by Sasa Liviu Stoianovici, and a round table on the future of literary translations. 2,600 exhibitors have announced their participation in the 2018 edition of the International Book Fair in Leipzig.
