Romanian Centennial was the central theme of the 25th
\nedition of the Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair, hosted between
\nNovember 14th and 18th by the Romexpo Exhibition Centre
\nin Bucharest. Around 600 volumes and some 50 events-book launches and
\npresentations, debates, film screenings, public lectures-marked the Great Union
\nCentennial and the end of World War I, as well as 90 years since the first
\nbroadcast aired by Radio Romania.<\/p>\n
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This year, the Fair brought together over 300 participants:
\nestablished Romanian publishing institutions, education institutions, book and
\nperiodical distributors, producers of educational games, professional
\nassociations and NGOs working in the field of culture and education. Our guests
\ntoday, Bogdan Alexandru Stanescu, head of the Biblioteca Polirom world
\nliterature collection, Andreea Rasuceanu, the initiator and coordinator of the
\nContemporary Romanian Writers series of the Humanitas publishing house, and
\nEli Banica, the initiator and head of the n’autor collection launched by
\nNemira Publishers, spoke about the highlights of this year’s edition.<\/p>\n
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George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant was one of the most eagerly
\nawaited releases in Biblioteca Polirom collection. Bogdan Alexandru Stanescu
\ntold us more about this volume and about other novelties in the collection:<\/p>\n
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The book brings together essays on the years spent by George
\nOrwell as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, in 1922-1927, and on
\nhis self-imposed poverty period. These essays are, perhaps to a higher extent
\nthan his diary, in a position to shed light on the portrait of this British
\nwriter. Another new title in Biblioteca Polirom is Philip Roth’s Why Write?
\nbrilliantly translated by Radu Pavel Gheo. It is a non-fiction book, comprising
\ninterviews, essays, confessions, the last book that Roth lived to see
\npublished, by the prestigious Library of America. It also includes
\nautobiographical pieces published by Roth between 1960 and 2014. Also in this
\nyear’s edition of Gaudeamus we launched A Lifetime in Letters. Correspondence
\nI (1879-1890) by A. P. Chekhov. It is an edition translated and edited by
\nSorina Balanescu, and this first volume of Chekhov’s epistolary autobiography
\ncomprises letters sent by the author between 1879 and 1890. It was originally
\ndesigned as a 3-volume edition, but details change from one month to the next,
\nso a fourth volume is not out of the question.<\/p>\n
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\n
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Last year, Humanitas Publishers launched a new collection, entitled
\nContemporary Romanian Writers. Andreea Rasuceanu, the coordinator of the
\ncollection, believes that contemporary Romanian literature is very diverse, and
\nthis diversity must be properly showcased. She also gave us details about new
\ntitles launched in this collection at the Gaudeamus fair:<\/p>\n
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\n
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Humanitas Publishers opened the series of new releases with
\n3 new books. The first is Radu Vancu’s Transparency, an erudite, semi-fantasy
\nnovel, reminding of Mircea Cartarescu’s style, and which incorporates a
\nwonderful love story. The plot is set in a mythical version of Sibiu, rewriting
\nits map and including it in a list of fictionalised cities. Another book that
\nwe launched at Gaudeamus is Iulian Popa’s debut work, Guadalajara, a short
\nstory volume. The author has a fresh voice, one that convinced me as soon as I
\nread some of his stories. They have a sense of quaintness, of melancholy,
\nwhether they talk about a couple’s crisis, about the loneliness and confusion
\nof old age, or about the lack of communication in today’s world. It is a prose
\nin which I believe, and I hope it will be successful. And not least, we have a
\ncollective volume, an anthology called 16 prose writers of today, which
\nincludes works by some of the most important contemporary Romanian prose
\nwriters.<\/p>\n
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\n
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Another collection focusing on Romanian literature is n’autor, launched
\nby Nemira this year. A collection that describes the world we live in, the
\nreality of our days and of the past, snapshots of Romanian society and of the
\nworld, the constantly changing mankind. Eli Badica:<\/p>\n
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\n
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The latest volume, which we launched at the Gaudeamus Fair,
\nis a novel entitled The night between the worlds, by Irina Georgescu Groza.
\nIrina made her debut with a volume of short stories brought out by Casa de
\nPariuri Literare 2 years ago, and now she is back with this splendid novel,
\nwhose protagonist is a very special little girl living in the communist era. As
\nregards how we promote and receive literature, what I can say is that foreign
\nliterature still benefits from much stronger promotion than Romanian
\nliterature. But all the responses we have received so far since the launch of
\nthis collection, n’autor, help me remain an optimist. During our promotion
\ntours we talked to bookshop owners, who know better than anyone what sells and
\nwhat doesn’t, and they are optimistic as well. They told me that the recent
\nreleases in this collection, namely A horse in a sea of swans by Raluca Nagy
\nand Stories from a garage by Goran Mrakic, were very well received by
\nreaders. They were books that people are buying and talk about, from readers to
\nbloggers and journalists. This makes me believe in the Romanian public and I
\nthink it is a good time for the Romanian market, in the sense that Romanian authors
\nare increasingly visible and readers are beginning to realise that many of the
\nRomanian writers are just as good as foreign ones.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The prestigious festival organized by Radio Romania has reached its 25th edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":79516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[44798,44953,34036,28913],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-159951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture","tag-book-launches","tag-gaudeamus-bookj-fair","tag-great-union-centennial","tag-radio-romania"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n