The International Literature Festival in Timisoara

the international literature festival in timisoara 20 writers from 10 countries attended the 6th International Literature Festival in Timisoara

Some 20 writers from 10 countries attended the 6th International Literature Festival (FILTM) in the Western city of Timisoara over October 25th-28th. Public readings, debates and writers' dialogues with readers took place. There were also two new sections added to the festival: a poetry marathon bringing together writers from Central and South-Eastern Europe and Literary Death Match featuring a number of authors reading from their own writings and then assessed by judges. "History between memory and fiction" was one of the themes proposed by the organisers at this year's edition. 


Poet Robert Serban, the president of the festival, explains:

"I think that each of us, writers and readers, has a connection with history. This festival is entitled West of East/East of West. In Central and Eastern Europe there are stories we should know, our stories, the stories of our neighbours, stories we have interacted with, stories that have moulded us from a cultural and historical point of view and ultimately from a human viewpoint too. Romania has constantly interacted with and permanently carried on a dialogue with the neighbouring countries and it is very important that we know our partners of dialogue. It is also important that we know the people by our side; it is perhaps more important than to know people on other continents."


On the first night of the festival, literature lovers in Timisoara had the chance to meet two of the foremost Romanian writers, prose writer Gabriela Adamesteanu, the most translated contemporary Romanian author, and Ion Vianu, who splits his time between Switzerland and Romania. 


Robert Serban tells us more:
"On the first night we brought together established writers. As you may know, Gabriela Adamesteanu is one of the most translated Romanian writers. She made her debut in the mid 1970s and was very active in the Romanian media in the 1990s, shortly after the revolution, as director of Revista 22, being also a member of the Group for Social Dialogue. Ion Vianu was one of the few courageous people during Ceausescu's dictatorship in Romania, being among the few to show solidarity with the dissident writer Paul Goma. Then he went into exile to Switzerland because he risked being the target of retaliation. Writers spoke about history and their latest works, the discussion being moderated by writer Adriana Babeti, one of the intellectuals Timisoara takes pride in."


On the second night of the festival, the well-known Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan, a veteran of the Euromaidan, and the German prose writer of Polish descent Matthias Nawrat talked face to face. Tatiana Tibuleac of the Republic of Moldova, the author of one of the best novels published in 2016, carried on a face-to-face dialogue with Dan Lungu, the most translated Romanian writer of the new generation.


Before attending the Timisoara Festival, where she was presented as "a revelation in the contemporary Romanian literature", Tatiana Tibuleac had also been invited to the International Festival of Literature and Translation in the North-Eastern city of Iasi. Tatiana Tibuleac:

"Both the Iasi Festival and the Timisoara Festival were like a holiday for me. Besides the unexpected surprise of being invited, it was also a great joy to meet so many people I had only known from their works and to attend the festivals for the first time as a writer because I had only been at such festivals as a journalist. I liked the Festival in Timisoara very much for the way it was organised, though there were less participants than in the Iasi Festival. The discussions I participated in were very important for me to know my position as a writer. The talks I had with Ion Vianu and Gabriela Adamesteanu after the festival were also very important. Those people wrote books that can be considered real lessons of literature. Reading some prose by Gabriela Adamesteanu recently, I noted that years ago, she had written stuff that seems new to us today. That is why, it is very important to be connected to literature and realise that themes are recurrent and we only deal with them in a different way."


 "Short and intense, the splendid novel of Tatiana Tibuleac shoots to fame a prose writer from whom I have the greatest expectations", writes Radu Vancu about her novel "The Summer when My Mother's Eyes Were Green" brought out by Cartier Publishers. Tatiana Tibuleac again:

 "When I started to write, I didn't think it would be a book. I started to write the story of a woman who impressed me last summer. But as I was writing, I realised I couldn't stop and very many things on my mind that were somehow hidden, started coming out in that story. And then I thought I should carry on to see what would come of it. At a certain point, I realised that I had to go through with that book. There were a lot of things I had wanted to say but I hadn't found the form, the opportunity or the moment to do it. And that book gave me all that. After I wrote it, I realised how much good it had done to me to say those things."


Appreciated by readers and critics alike, Tatiana Tibuleac will see her novel published by the French publishing house Syrtes next year.



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Publicat: 2017-11-25 13:50:00
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