Some of the most famous writers, publishers and cultural personalities will meet you at the National Theatre, between 24 and 27 September, at the eleventh edition of the Bookfest Târgu Mureș Book Fair

Armand Goșu, Mihaela Miroiu, Radu Paraschivescu, Camelia Cavadia, Adrian Christescu, Alina Nelega, Robert Gabriel Elekes,  

Al. Cistelecan, Claudiu Komartin, Dan-Liviu Boeriu, Ioan Chiorean, Alina Pavelescu, Șerban-Liviu Pavelescu, Cristian Preda or Cătălin Vasilescu are just some of the names present in the Bookfest Târgu Mureș program

Admission to events is free, and publishers will have unrefusable offers

The Bookfest Book Fair returns to Târgu Mureș with a special edition and numerous events: book launches, debates, meetings with prominent personalities and autograph sessions. Between September 24 and 27, at the National Theater of Târgu Mureș, you can meet Dan-Liviu Boeriu, Camelia Cavadia, Adrian Christescu, Ioan Chiorean, Al. Cistelecan, Robert Gabriel Elekes, Armand Goșu, Claudiu Komartin, Mihaela Miroiu, Alina Nelega, Radu Paraschivescu, Alina Pavelescu, Șerban-Liviu Pavelescu, Cristian Preda, Cătălin Vasilescu and others. Public access to all events is free, and the visiting hours are 10 am - 8 pm.

Not to be missed are the discounts and offers that the participating publishers will have for the multitude of books present in the foyer of the National Theatre. You will find them at the stands of the following exhibitors: ALL Publishing Group, ARI Publishing House, ART Publishing Group, Castrum de Thymes Publishing House, Corint Publishing Group, Eikon Publishing House, Gama Publishing House, Humanitas Group, Ink Story Publishing House, Black Swan Publishing House, Librarus Publishing, Midaway Publishing House, Napoca Star Publishing House, Niculescu-Oxford University Press, Polirom Publishing House, Proema – ANCI, Trei Publishing House, University Press Publishing House – UMFST G.E. Palade Târgu Mureș, Zupia Publishing House.

Football, ideologies and modern poetry in Friday's program

The 11th edition of the Bookfest Târgu Mureș Book Fair officially opens on Thursday, September 24, at 12 noon.

On Thursday evening, starting at 6:15 p.m., the public is invited to a piano concert held by Tóni Szilàgyi, a former member of the traditional music band Parno Graszt, and who is on the rise after his return to the country in 2023.

Friday, September 25, welcomes the public with various events. Thus, from 5.30 p.m., the Black Swan publishing house proposes an event dedicated to sports and literature enthusiasts, namely the presentation of the volume Liverpool's Anatomy by Jonathan Wilson and Scott Murray, translated by Radu Paraschivescu. The book traces the history of the English club through ten landmark matches, including both victories and dramas on the edge of the pitch. The writer and translator of this volume, Radu Paraschivescu, and the editor and writer Adrian Christescu will talk about the book.

We change the register starting with 18.30, when the Humanitas publishing house launches the volume Ideologies and Ideologues in Contemporary Romania, by political science professor Cristian Preda: "an entire typology, which sometimes bounces off the fauna. The scoundrel and the nationalist with the hammer and sickle at his waist, the scoundrel and the unconscious, the pathfinder and the coward, the conjuncture amnesiac and the buffoon, the unscrupulous scoundrel and the fool at night, the plagiarist with ifos and the unrepentant neo-Stalinist – they all find a place in this encyclopedia in which gravity and humor allow each other and complement each other", is the description of the book made by Professor Preda's dialogue partner, Radu Paraschivescu.

Friday evening ends under the sign of poetry. Starting at 7 p.m., Max Blecher Publishing House presents the new volumes bozgor bebop by Robert Gabriel Elekes and In vortex by Claudiu Komartin. Alongside the authors at the launch will be the literary critic Al. Cistelecan. 

Camelia Cavadia teaches us to dance in the face of pain

Saturday, September 25, will be a day rich in events, from which the bibliophile public cannot miss. 

At 1 p.m., Trei Publishing House will present a new novel by writer and journalist Camelia Cavadia, Dancing When You Feel Like Crying – a novel in which the central axis is friendship as a fundamental relationship between people. The author will have a dialogue with Anca Sfâriac, psychologist and teacher.

Starting at 12.30, the Humanitas publishing house has prepared an event dedicated to Nadia Comăneci, starting from the anniversary edition of the volume Letters to a Young Gymnast, signed by the legend of world sport herself, and For the Sake of Nadia Comăneci by Cho Nam-joo. Radu Paraschivescu and Cristian Preda will reveal more about the story behind the perfect first 10 in the history of the Olympic Games.

Armand Goșu deciphers Putin's game

The Bookfest audience can meet, at 1 p.m., with historian and analyst Armand Goșu, professor at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bucharest, specialist in the history of Russia and the ex-Soviet space, who will have a dialogue with journalist Ioan Chiorean, starting from the volume The Endless War. How the invasion of Ukraine changed the rules of the game.

Ora 14 brings to the fore social satire and intelligent humor through the volume The New Guide to the Insensitive. After 20 years, published by Humanitas Publishing House and signed by Radu Paraschivescu. This book is a (new) guided tour of insensitivity, which contains a series of proofs of virtuosity in the field. Sometimes, the picturesque drowns in abjection, other times laughter freezes on the lips. Next to the author will be Cristian Preda, and the launch will be followed by an autograph session.

The publishing houses Humanitas Fiction and Humanitas propose for debate a series of novelties brought together under the brand of autobiography. Starting at 2.45 p.m., Dan-Liviu Boeriu, Radu Paraschivescu and Cristian Preda will present the volumes My True Name. Biography Stories by Ludmila Ulitskaia, My Refuge, My Storm by Arundhati Roy, The History of My Money by Melissa Panarello and Until the Great River Will Separate Us by Elizabeth Gilbert. My Real Name. Stories from Biography is a polyphonic book, in a succession of memorable characters, episodes and details of everyday life, small and large loves, in addition to seven stories with an angelic tinge, whose connection with the autobiographical part becomes clear regarding the volume as a whole – they distill the author's experiences and reflections. Arundhati Roy's first volume of memoirs, My Refuge, My Storm, follows, with the narrative force of her novels and lucidity, the evolution of one of the most powerful authors of contemporary literature. Covering the period between 1962 and 2022, the book reconstructs the inner path of a consciousness in formation: the fractured childhood, the necessary rupture, the years of fertile wandering and, finally, the emergence of the novelist and essayist.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestsellers Eat, Pray, Love, And I Said Yes and Magic Lessons, returns with an intimate memoir of relentless sincerity. Until the Great River Do Us Do Us Do Well is a courageous meditation on love, loss, and the arduous road of recovery.

Dr. Cătălin Vasilescu and Rector Leonard Azamfirei launch "Placebo"

Starting at 15:15, Humanitas Publishing House brings to the public's attention the volume Placebo. Surgeons in Search of Immortality, the most recent editorial publication signed by surgeon Cătălin Vasilescu, professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, which "gracefully fits into the series of doctors-writers and thinkers, illustrated, in Romania, by Vasile Voiculescu, C.D. Zeletin or Emil Brumaru." as described by Andrei Pleșu. Alongside the author will be Leonard Azamfirei, physician and rector of the University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Sciences and Technology of Târgu Mureș, and writer Radu Paraschivescu.

We remain with the Humanitas publishing house, which launches, at 4 p.m., the autobiographical novel The Aquarium and a few other additional proofs, the new volume signed by Dan-Liviu Boeriu – described by the writer Tatiana Niculescu as "such a powerful testimony about male fragility and about the slips of the mind that finds in the written word the anchor of affective survival". The author will have Radu Paraschivescu as a guest, and the launch will end with an autograph session.

Starting at 4:30 p.m., we will change the register through the volume published in the History collection of the Humanitas publishing house, the bestseller The History of the Blind. Romania at War, 1940–1945 by Alina Pavelescu and Șerban-Liviu Pavelescu – a reconstruction of the individual moral choices made by Romanians during the years of the Second World War. The dialogue will be led by Cristian Preda and Cornel Sigmirean together with the authors of the volume, and the event will be followed by an autograph session.

The Black Swan Publishing House presents, starting at 5.15 p.m., the volume signed by Adrian Christescu, The Roman Empire of Dâmbovița. The book brings together stories about entrepreneurship, in an economic climate with accents of black humor, combining epic, self-irony and Balkan realism. Guests along with the author will be Monica Avram, director of the Mureș County Library and the writer Călin Pintea. 

Mario Vargas Llosa, evoked by Dan-Liviu Boeriu, Radu Paraschivescu and Cristian Preda

Starting at 6 p.m., Humanitas Fiction Publishing House dedicates a new event to international literature. Dan-Liviu Boeriu, Radu Paraschivescu and Cristian Preda invite us to discover three novels published in Denisa's Shelf collection: I Dedicate My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa, The Unforgettable Suite by Akira Mizubayashi and The Silence of the Drums by Hanna Pylväinen. 

Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa offers the world one last novel – the story of a great idealist who imagines a Peru of reconciliation and fraternity, in which music heals the wounds of the past and dictates the harmony of the future.

The Unforgettable Suite, a multi-award-winning novel at the French Literary Awards, transforms music into a form of memory and tells a story about what time, violence and oblivion fail to destroy.

The Silence of the Drums, in the process of being translated in more than 20 countries, is a wide and profound novel about the disappearance of a world, resistance, identity, sacrifice out of love and the unbreakable bond between people and the land they call home.

Mihaela Miroiu and Alina Nelega talk about Home

The last event of Saturday evening is prepared by the Castrum de Thymes publishing house, which invites the public at 7 p.m. to discover the volume Light from the Darkness − Collection of Regressions on the Traumas of the Second World War, signed by Ioana Feurdean and Cristina Gîrbovan. The volume brings together the accounts of six participants in regressive hypnosis and channeling sessions, exploring, from multiple perspectives, experiences related to Germany during the Second World War. At the center of the volume is the figure of Heinrich Müller, the head of the Gestapo, along with references to Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring. Beyond the historical dimension, the book addresses themes such as individual and collective trauma, subconscious memory, responsibility, free will and reincarnation, putting in dialogue the accounts obtained through regression with the available historical information. The presentation of the volume will be made by Ioana Feurdean, hypnotherapist, personal development counselor, trainer, relationship coach, Dorina Matiș, hypnotherapist, book author, journalist and actor Liviu Pancu.

On Sunday, September 27, from 1 p.m., the Bookfest Târgu Mureș public has the rare opportunity to meet two renowned cultural personalities: university professor Mihaela Miroiu, one of the most famous voices in gender studies and political theory in Romania, and the writer Alina Nelega, who will be with her at the launch of the book Home is Where I Can Love, which Mihaela Miroiu signs at the Polirom publishing house. "In recent years, my friend did not agree with me on many issues. Perhaps she still had the illusion that universal history is progress in the consciousness of freedom (from Hegel reading). Perhaps such a view of the world is typical of all those who have not been stepped by the train. Yet. It's clear, moving to another stage of life on earth, aging, in my case, makes you see the world with its limits and determinisms. You are less intransigent about your causes, once you see that they can be killed, sometimes in nuts. You appreciate the art of compromise for coexistence. Politically you do it for pluralism, because without it you can only feed the desert of dictatorship. Or, simply, in my case, old age, in the ecumenical sense, was established very early. I avoided people who thought radically differently only when they became insulting and aggressive. Only then did I think I had nothing more to do. What about violence, including political violence? Violence is a rabid stage of anger and indignation," says Mihaela Miroiu about the path she took in writing this book.

The updated schedule of launches will soon be available on the bookfest.ro page

As with all Bookfest events, the public will be free to enter the Salon. Bookfest Târgu Mureș 2026 can be visited between 10 am and 8 pm.

The Bookfest Book Fair is organized by the Romanian Publishers' Association, under the aegis of the Romanian Publishers' Federation, with the support of the Mureș County Library and with the financial support of the Târgu Mureș Local Council and the Mureș County Council.

Bookfest is the most important book fair in Romania and the only event of the publishing industry that has managed to gain a significant international dimension. Over 150 exhibitors were present at the 2026 Bookfest International Book Fair (Bucharest, May 29 - June 2, 2026), the five-day program comprising over 400 events, from launches and debates to film screenings and interactive events. The guest of honor of the 2026 edition was Bulgaria. At previous international editions, the invited countries were: Spain, Hungary, France, German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), Poland, Czech Republic, Israel, Sweden, United States of America, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Republic of Moldova and Portugal.

The Bookfest Book Fair has local editions in Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca, Târgu Mureș, Brașov and international editions in Bucharest and Chisinau.

Contact:

Mihai Mitrică

Executive Director 

tel.: 0728 327 601

Email: mihai.mitrica@aer.ro

Adrian Baciu

Public Relations Assistant

tel.: 0728 327 603

Email: adrian.baciu@aer.ro