Romania’s 8th consecutive participation at the London Book Fair evokes, through the authors and the books reunited in a truly Romanian-British programme, the virtue of literature to precipitate great encounters and revelations: inner, cultural, geographical. At the same time, the events unfolding at Romania’s stand in Olympia Exhibition Centre, at the Romanian Cultural Institute in 1 Belgrave Square and at the European Bookshop near Piccadilly Circus convey the power of words to reveal, through various yet equally legitimate discourses, even the most obscure or intricate facets of identity.
The Romanian programme revolves around two major writers - one Romanian, the other British - who have made their work, each in his/her own way, the privileged space of major discoveries.
ICR's special guest is poet Ana Blandiana, not only one of the most important postwar Romanian authors, but also a tireless campaigner for civic causes and a builder of institutions devoted to the conservation of national memory. The other author is Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011), war hero, towering cultural personality and the most revered travel writer in Britain for decades, who transcribed, in hundreds of exquisite pages, the jubilation of his encounter with the people and the landscapes of Romania.
The three days of meetings, dialogues and book launches bring together, as in previous years, writers and academics who forged relevant and enduring links between the Romanian and the British cultural scene: poets Fleur Adcock andVidyan Ravinthiran, translators Viorica Patea and Paul Scott Derrick, writer Liviu Antonesei, researchersMarius Turda, Daniel Briggs and Dorina Dobre, authors Nigel Shakespear and Ian Macilwain, historian Alan Ogden, journalist Tom Fort, as well as major cultural figures of the Romanian diaspora in the UK - Michael de Styrcea, Şerban Cantacuzino and Marie-Lyse Ruhemann, joined by musicians Nicolas Simion and Sorin Romanescu.
The Romanian presence at the LBF 2015 is organised by the Romanian Cultural Institute's National Book Centre and the Romanian Cultural Institute in London, with the support of the Romanian Embassy, European Bookshop, Romanian Publishers Association and Patrick Leigh Fermor Society.
For more details visit ICR website.
