The Gaudeamus International Book Fair

the gaudeamus international book fair  The prestigious festival organized by Radio Romania has reached its 25th edition

"Romanian Centennial" was the central theme of the 25th edition of the Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair, hosted between November 14th and 18th by the Romexpo Exhibition Centre in Bucharest. Around 600 volumes and some 50 events-book launches and presentations, debates, film screenings, public lectures-marked the Great Union Centennial and the end of World War I, as well as 90 years since the first broadcast aired by Radio Romania.


This year, the Fair brought together over 300 participants: established Romanian publishing institutions, education institutions, book and periodical distributors, producers of educational games, professional associations and NGOs working in the field of culture and education. Our guests today, Bogdan Alexandru Stanescu, head of the "Biblioteca Polirom" world literature collection, Andreea Rasuceanu, the initiator and coordinator of the "Contemporary Romanian Writers" series of the Humanitas publishing house, and Eli Banica, the initiator and head of the "n'autor" collection launched by Nemira Publishers, spoke about the highlights of this year's edition.


George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" was one of the most eagerly awaited releases in "Biblioteca Polirom" collection. Bogdan Alexandru Stanescu told us more about this volume and about other novelties in the collection:


"The book brings together essays on the years spent by George Orwell as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, in 1922-1927, and on his self-imposed poverty period. These essays are, perhaps to a higher extent than his diary, in a position to shed light on the portrait of this British writer. Another new title in Biblioteca Polirom is Philip Roth's "Why Write?" brilliantly translated by Radu Pavel Gheo. It is a non-fiction book, comprising interviews, essays, confessions, the last book that Roth lived to see published, by the prestigious Library of America. It also includes autobiographical pieces published by Roth between 1960 and 2014. Also in this year's edition of Gaudeamus we launched "A Lifetime in Letters. Correspondence I (1879-1890)" by A. P. Chekhov. It is an edition translated and edited by Sorina Balanescu, and this first volume of Chekhov's epistolary autobiography comprises letters sent by the author between 1879 and 1890. It was originally designed as a 3-volume edition, but details change from one month to the next, so a fourth volume is not out of the question."


Last year, Humanitas Publishers launched a new collection, entitled Contemporary Romanian Writers. Andreea Rasuceanu, the coordinator of the collection, believes that contemporary Romanian literature is very diverse, and this diversity must be properly showcased. She also gave us details about new titles launched in this collection at the Gaudeamus fair:


"Humanitas Publishers opened the series of new releases with 3 new books. The first is Radu Vancu's "Transparency", an erudite, semi-fantasy novel, reminding of Mircea Cartarescu's style, and which incorporates a wonderful love story. The plot is set in a mythical version of Sibiu, rewriting its map and including it in a list of fictionalised cities. Another book that we launched at Gaudeamus is Iulian Popa's debut work, "Guadalajara", a short story volume. The author has a fresh voice, one that convinced me as soon as I read some of his stories. They have a sense of quaintness, of melancholy, whether they talk about a couple's crisis, about the loneliness and confusion of old age, or about the lack of communication in today's world. It is a prose in which I believe, and I hope it will be successful. And not least, we have a collective volume, an anthology called "16 prose writers of today," which includes works by some of the most important contemporary Romanian prose writers.""


Another collection focusing on Romanian literature is "n'autor," launched by Nemira this year. A collection that describes the world we live in, the reality of our days and of the past, snapshots of Romanian society and of the world, the constantly changing mankind. Eli Badica:


 "The latest volume, which we launched at the Gaudeamus Fair, is a novel entitled "The night between the worlds," by Irina Georgescu Groza. Irina made her debut with a volume of short stories brought out by Casa de Pariuri Literare 2 years ago, and now she is back with this splendid novel, whose protagonist is a very special little girl living in the communist era. As regards how we promote and receive literature, what I can say is that foreign literature still benefits from much stronger promotion than Romanian literature. But all the responses we have received so far since the launch of this collection, "n'autor", help me remain an optimist. During our promotion tours we talked to bookshop owners, who know better than anyone what sells and what doesn't, and they are optimistic as well. They told me that the recent releases in this collection, namely "A horse in a sea of swans" by Raluca Nagy and "Stories from a garage" by Goran Mrakic, were very well received by readers. They were books that people are buying and talk about, from readers to bloggers and journalists. This makes me believe in the Romanian public and I think it is a good time for the Romanian market, in the sense that Romanian authors are increasingly visible and readers are beginning to realise that many of the Romanian writers are just as good as foreign ones."



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Publicat: 2018-11-24 11:41:00
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