The Iasi International Literature and Translation Festival

The Iasi International Literature and Translation Festival has brought together writers, translators, publishers, booksellers, cultural managers and arts journalists.

Corina Sabău, 14.10.2017, 14:13

Between October 4 and 8, the city of Iasi
hosted the fifth Iasi International Literature and Translation Festival
(FILIT). It brought together writers, translators, editors, festival organisers,
booksellers, managers and culture journalists. Nobel Prize winner in literature
in 2000, Gao Xingjian, was among those attending the festival. At first, organisers
had announced that one of the guests was going to be the Nobel Prize winner for
2015, Svetlana Alexievich, who cancelled her attendance for health reasons.
Here is writer Florin Lazarescu, one of the founding members of the festival:

I am glad the list of guests attracts people
here, but the main attraction is the list of over 100 events, all equally
spectacular and interesting. Speaking of the Nobel Prize, I would like to say
that this FILIT edition has been attended by three other very highly valued
writers, who will possibly get the Nobel prize themselves. Everyone has read
Mircea Cartarescu, but not many people know how highly appreciated two of our
guests are, Olga Tokarczuk of Poland and Nurruddin Farah of Somalia, both of
whom have a sensible shot at winning the Nobel. There are many more interesting
writers, whose writings have been translated into 30 to 40 languages, who have
won many awards, and whose books have been published by the most prestigious
publishing houses in Romania. Vesna Goldsworthy of Serbia, and Lisa Stromme, a
Brit living in Norway, author of Raspberry Girl, published by Humanitas Fiction
in 2017, are two of the writers you can meet at FILIT. Not to mention Jonathan
Coe, who is immensely successful in Romania, you should see the reaction we got
when we announced he would be coming.

After the 2013 edition, the Spanish daily El
Pais said that FILIT, though it is at its first edition, is already the most
important eastern European literary festival. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
wrote that such an event, of true European manner, has never been held in
Romania thus far. This year at FILIT House the fans met a plethora of writers
from a variety of countries, and the organisation plans to open two more such
venues. Lucian Dan Teodorovici is one of the initiators, and manages the
festival:

We are talking about two new programs, Fantasy
House and Childhood House, each of them hosting events attended by Romanian
writers. Another novelty is the way in which we will coordinate and gather
together the exhibitions the National Romanian Literature Museum of Iasi
already offers. Casa Pogor, featuring four venues for exhibitions, will gather
together this year four different events under the same topic, and that is the
main attraction for both writers and readers. For this year’s FILIT edition, we
have laid out a Jewish museum, because Iasi had a rich history in terms of
Jewish culture. At some point, in the early 20th century, roughly a
third of the city’s population was Jewish. Then followed the tragedy that has
to be remembered and acknowledged, even today.

Let’s see now what Florin Lazarescu, one of the
festival initiators, had to say about the atmosphere:

The simple fact that tens of thousands of
people attended the event, the fact that the whole community is interested, is
extraordinary. Even last year, when a smaller version of the festival was held,
we had 10,000 people in attendance. I believe that this is the greatest success
of FILIT, its educational character. This is a huge campaign for reading,
plenty of people see books differently after FILIT. I heard countless times
that children did not read before the festival, but now they are buying their
own books. Because they came into contact with writers, they saw it was
spectacular. This year, for instance, we took one of the FILIT events to a high
school in the county, and the teacher there called me and said that the
students are delighted to meet a writer, they said they had never seen a
writer. In Iasi, for instance, we go to ten high schools, and we have already
had specific requests, regarding the children’s preferences. Many of them even
befriended the writers. For instance, they go on Skype with writers invited to
FILIT, they are organising events by themselves already.

The 5th edition of FILIT is under
the High Patronage of the European Commission Mission to Romania. This is their
third collaboration, after the 2014 and 2016 editions, which included
professional literary events for the purpose of promoting cultural diversity.