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The Gaudeamus International Book Fair

More than 300 exhibitors, 700 different events and a record number of 125,000 visitors have confirmed the fact that the Gaudeamus International Book Fair is the leading event on the domestic book fair market. The guest of honour of the fair, which took place between the 18th and the 22nd of November, was the Group of Francophone Embassies, Delegations and Institutions in Romania (GADIF), while its honorary president was Victor Ieronim Stoichita, an art history researcher and professor.

Corina Sabău, 05.12.2015, 14:09

Its organiser, Radio Romania, through its Media Cultural Centre, is the only radio station in the world to develop such an extensive programme aimed at promoting written culture. Now in its 22nd year, the fair had three main themes: childrens literature, great inter-war writers and Romanian contemporary literature. Daria Ghiu, from Casa Radio publishing house, explains:

Daria Ghiu: “As far as childrens literature is concerned, in the Radio Prichindel collection, which we expand every year, we launched the audiobook and the illustrated text of Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland. This year its the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of this famous book and there is even a website dedicated to this anniversary. Exhibitions have also been staged, including one in London about the first editions of the book and how the story has been illustrated over the past 150 years, including by Salvador Dali. The text is not easy to illustrate, because it is such a complicated, playful and spectacular text and its difficult to create something new. The product we launched is based on a radio dramatisation from 1968, a version that is well known to almost all generations of radio listeners. Our package includes a CD and a book illustrated by a young artist, Ana Botezatu. I was surprised how good the illustration was. It uses collage and it reminds me of avant-garde art and Dadaism, I even compared the artist with Hannah Hoch. The result is something completely new.

One of the books launched by the Humanitas publishing house at this years Gaudeamus fair is called Our Imaginary Friends and brings together leading literary figures in Romania such as Serban Foarta, Elena Vladareanu, Emil Brumaru, Marin Malaicu-Hondrari and Antoaneta Ralian. This book by multiple authors teaches us that a child can live in his or her own world for a few days, but can also remain in this world forever, that some parents can themselves see the imaginary friends of their children and that you can be 91 years old and still wonder whether you are in fact your imaginary self. The coordinator of this interesting volume, Nadine Vladescu, tells us more:

Nadine Vladescu: “I was very happy that Antoaneta Ralian, who is 91 years old, accepted our invitation to be part of this book. She wrote about her imaginary friend, a young man called Marcel, which is her masculine alter ego and is somehow inspired by Marcel Proust. She talks about Proust beautifully and with a lot of depth, using a very personal kind of psychoanalytical approach. In this book, we also find out about other imaginary friends, just as interesting as Marcel. Its a very successful heterogeneous mix. As the critic Tania Radu wrote on the back of the book, the content of the book is a very natural mix. There are 13 different stories and 13 very different imaginary friends, from an imaginary balloon to a snail who is also a prince, the young man called Marcel, the woman as goddess, the adored woman, a very likeable pig who plays the bassoon, a spirit who can take any form, a mischievous doll, an alter ego in the mirror, and, at the head of this table around which the writers imaginary friends are gathered, sits God himself. I wont divulge whose friend he is, but will let readers find out.

The frACTalia publishing group was established this year, at the initiative of a group of Romanian writers and graphic artists. Iulia Militaru, one of the initiators, tells us more about the titles launched by the group at Gaudeamus:

Iulia Militaru: “While some publishing houses close down, others have record sales. At the end of the day, its all about how you manage things. We hope we will make it on this market and strike a balance between what we publish and how much profit we make, because there is always this problem. We didnt set out to make a profit from the sale of our books, but out of passion. This year at Gaudeamus, we launched our publishing house and presented several books of poetry, two debut works and a new edition of an older work.

The poetry books in question are by Razvan Pricop and Octavian Perpelea, as well as a new edition of Andra Rotarus debut work to mark ten years since debut.