Dan Croitoru – translator, Polirom editorial director, board member of the Romanian Publishers Association

It was also time for Portugal, for literature written in Portuguese, to be the guest of honor of the Bookfest International Book Fair. For which we should express our gratitude to the Portuguese Embassy in Romania, which accepted the invitation of the Romanian Publishers Association. Warm thanks to the Camoes Institute in Bucharest for its invaluable help. Last but not least, we are grateful to Romanian publishers, because thanks to their efforts, Romanian readers can have access to literature written in Portuguese. Thus, this year's edition will bring to the forefront one of the oldest and richest cultures and civilizations in Europe, with a literary tradition that goes back in time to the 13th century, to the Cancioneiro da Ajuda. For Romanian readers, it will be an extraordinary opportunity to (re)approach the literature of that unique place "where the sea ended and the earth awaits". A literature imbued with nostalgia, with saudade, but at the same time a literature of lucidity. A literature of bitter satire, whose leading representatives - Eccéa de Queiroz, Antero de Quental or José Saramago - They fought unwaveringly against obscurantism, against oppressive religion, against absolutism and dictatorship. A literature constantly in search of freedom. In the dark times we live in, the presence of Portuguese culture and literature at the 18th edition of Bookfest can be a symbol of freedom.

Dinu Flăm´and – poet, essayist, translator: „Lisbon, Mon Amour”

Two great writers took me by the hand through Lisbon and continue to interpret the soul of the Portuguese for me. I began to discover Fernando Pessoa's Lisbon in the autumn of 1985, right in Lisbon, following along and at the same time translating the wonderful pages of The Book of Restlessness. The "tourist guide" found among the papers of his generous trunk had not yet been published, but certain neighborhoods and places that delimited the perimeter of the static wanderings of that Soares, gripped by the restlessness that he himself necessarily maintained, were already shaping in my mind a daily journey in Pessoa's footsteps. Imagination completed this panorama, watching the play of light and clouds in the waters of the Tagus River or the nocturnal immersion of the city's hills and the mystery of so many streets, houses, parks, porticoes and terraces that still outline the melancholy of our European sunset here today. One day I thought I found the very famous Tutungeria that the poet designated in the poem of the same name (I won't tell you where, because it has no postal address!); and from the door of that shop I looked at the windows of the house across the street and I had the feeling that a curtain had been gently drawn by the poet's own hand. I describe this moment as best I can in a poem where, as Pessoa taught me, I don't know who I am either, although I speak on behalf of a humble character whom the poet had tenderly mocked.

And also on a street in Lisbon, perhaps on Rua du Conde de Retondo, perhaps on another, I often went to keep Antóio Lobo Antunes company, at his psychiatric office, where he actually came to write his novels, but he liked it if I was in the same room with him, writing on my papers and rarely exchanging a word with him. I had learned the ritual in the first weeks when he had hosted me, with his touching generosity, in the house outside Lisbon where he lived at the time. I would also come to visit him at this office, and once he even took me to the Miguel Bombarda insane asylum, where he had another medical office, and this one was more for writing (on his desk there was always a good amount of medical prescription forms on which Lobo would write, in extremely small handwriting, the first draft of a new novel). I would watch him secretly writing and I had the feeling that he was the doctor of the soul of Portugal: he would synthesize on those tiny pieces of standard paper his sagacious analyses although he did not prescribe any remedies to his contemporaries. In fact, both the powers of doctors and those of writers are limited. You know! When I understood this, I opened up too, I started talking to him at length about my life in Romania at that time, sitting with him face to face, because there was no need for any Viennese sofa. I didn't understand then why his only reaction after my hours of confession was thosesame question: “How can you live there”? Later I realized that it had helped me to get a lot of pus out of my soul, but that's another story. Thinking about those “analysis” sessions, some words about Lobo spontaneously came to me, not long ago, as if I were trying to unravel something of the mystery of his complex being. I offer you this poem here as well. Next time we'll go to the corner to order “uma bica”!

Denisa Comănescu – writer, director of Humanitas Fiction Publishing

Portuguese literature has offered me and continues to offer me some of the most precious books I publish.

To dedicate an author series to Fernando Pessoa, which currently features eight titles published by Humanitas Fiction Publishing, starting with the famous The Book of Disquiet, the first edition of which saw the light of day in 2009, and the most recent in 2024, up to The Education of the Stoic, a volume that is being launched at this Bookfest as part of a roundtable discussion on Pessoa's work, is an honor and a responsibility. The edition found its great translator and coordinator in the person of the poet Dinu Flămând.

Between 2001 and 2005, I initiated and coordinated the series of author José Saramago at Polirom Publishing House, with the late Mioara Caragea as an eminent translator. His novel Toate numele is one of the best fictions about the importance of memory for the individual and the nation that I have read.

Since 2006, first at Humanitas, then at Humanitas Fiction, I have been coordinating the series of works by António Lobo Antunes within the collection “Raftul Denisei”. Fado Alexandrino's masterpiece, an anti-epic of what we are experiencing today, in the exemplary translation signed by Dinu Flămând and Cristina Dăscălescu Dordea, is the theme of a round table at this edition of the Bookfest.

I don't want to forget Rui Zink, with the bestseller The Reader in the Cave, translated by the late Micaela Ghițescu, who makes both adults and children fall in love with reading literature.

I often reread The Book of Disquiet and Pessoa's poetry, in them I find the light that I lost long ago in the real world.

Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu – writer, translator, editorial director of „Anansi. World Fiction”, Trei Publishing

In the beginning there was Pessoa, read in the poetry collection Orfeu. It was the space in which Pessoa's heteronyms evolved, under the slanting rain. Then, for years, Portugal was Saramago. It was part of a peninsula that broke away from the continent and began to drift, it was the place where the hand of a proofreader managed, by adding a word, to change the history of a siege, it was the place where a poetic avatar became a character, then became a man in flesh and blood and walked the streets of Lisbon. And so Portugal became Pessoa again. Then came this young Portuguese writer who set his stories of love and death in a piano cemetery, who described the violence and misery of the village life, but found there the magical details of blessing, who described the apocalypse starting from the village of Galveias, and Portugal became Peixoto. And, in recent years, Portugal has taken on the face of Tavares, with his mathematical formulas of horror, with a journey to India at the end of which lies the same horror. All these writers mean Portugal for the reader in me.

Alexandra Ionel, editor of Casa Cărții de Știință

Building bridges to literatures from all over the world, the Cluj-Napoca-based publishing house Casa Cărții de Știință consistently proposes collections of literary translations that bring to the fore classic and contemporary authors from various cultural spaces. Each volume aims to offer Romanian readers access to strong voices, unexpected perspectives and the most diverse and innovative stylistic options. The published translations reflect not only the quality of the original texts, but also the publishing house's commitment to promoting constant and fruitful dialogue with translators, who are also the main discoverers of the writers and titles that we decide to include in our editorial catalog. This option also implies an implicit responsibility of the translator for the accuracy of the translated text and for an adequate reception of the writer proposed for interpretation.

Lusophone literature is represented by contemporary authors who have been awarded numerous national and international literary prizes. Among the published titles is the novel with poetic accents Fiul a mii de oameni by Valter Hugo Mãe, the essay Bucharest – Budapesta: Budapesta – Bucharest signed by Gonçalo M. Tavares, one of the most original voices of current European literature, both translated by Isabel Lazar, but also Average Index of Happiness by David Machado, a tender and lucid exploration of the human condition, volume translated into Romanian by Veronica Manole.

A major editorial project that sees the light of day on the occasion of the Bookfest International Book Fair, edition 2025, is the anthology Valuri, dunes, case deschise. A cartography of contemporary Portuguese storytelling, coordinated by Ana Rita Sousa and published with the support of the Embassy of Portugal in Romania and the Camões Institute. The volume brings together sixteen distinct voices, some of which are unpublished, from different generations and literary registers, voices with their own tonalities that give color to one of the most interesting contemporary literatures. For the Romanian reader, it also represents an encounter with a world from the other borders of Europe, a world both distant and close, which the magic of language transforms into an inexhaustible source of emotion.

Adriana Ciama – assoc. univ. dr., coordinator of the „Fernando Pessoa” Chair at the University of Bucharest

A minha pátria é a língua portuguesa, wrote Fernando Pessoa – a truth that remains just as relevant today. And when Portugal is the guest of honor at Bookfest 2025, we can say, by analogy, that the Portuguese homeland is moving to Bucharest for a few days. It is a joy shared by all those who, over the years, have contributed to the rapprochement between the Portuguese-speaking and Romanian spaces.

Without a doubt, it is also a recognition of a literary tradition and a cultural dialogue that symbolically began in 1927, with the publication of the first translation from Portuguese into Romanian, Iubire de pierzanie by Camilo Castelo Branco, in the version of Al. Popescu-Telega. Since then, especially in the 70s and 80s, Portuguese literature has traveled a path along which great writers have become known to Romanian readers: Camões, Garrett, Eccéa, Pessoa, Saramago. After 2000, interest in translating Portuguese-language authors has grown remarkably.

In this context, in which the translator is seen as a mediator between two cultures, I would also emphasize the role of the Portuguese language department at the University of Bucharest in training new generations of translators, who carry forward a tradition in which names such as Micaela Ghițescu and Mioara Caragea have stood out, two voices that I evoke with gratitude and emotion, for their significant contribution to the promotion of Portuguese literature in the Romanian cultural space. Also, the year 2024 marked an important anniversary for the Portuguese language section, namely, 50 years of existence - a true celebration of the Portuguese language as a cultural homeland, a proof of the continuity of an academic tradition.

Não tenhamos pressa, mas não percamos tempo, reminds us José Saramago. And indeed, it seems that time was not wasted: Portuguese-language literature has gained ground in the Romanian cultural space, through increasingly numerous translations and through the curiosity of its readers. At Bookfest 2025, we celebrate not just a literature, but the meeting between two cultures that, without haste, but without wasting time, continue to approach and discover each other. It will certainly be a joyous occasion for all literature lovers and a chance to explore the literary universe of Portuguese expression in all its diversity.

Mihai Zamfir – writer, historian and literary critic, professor emeritus of the Univ. of Bucharest

The adventure of teaching Portuguese began a long time ago, at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest.

It began when Spanish, Italian and other Romance languages ​​were taught in a somewhat artisanal manner, but the appearance of the Portuguese department meant the officialization of the Portuguese language at the University of Bucharest.

It took place at a time when Romanian had been taught for a long time, before the Second World War, at the University of Lisbon. So there was a kind of compensation, a belated symmetry with the situation in Lisbon. The first Portuguese lecturer to come to Bucharest, in 1974, was Carlo Lélis, with the arrival of the Portuguese lecturer who stayed much longer, José Bettencourt Gonçalves, very passionate about the job he practiced, Portuguese became a stable subject, with regular courses and the possibility of a bachelor's degree.The basis of Portuguese teaching was then this lecturer who came from Lisbon, who had proven to be my best student in Romanian and a linguist with a broad horizon.

We started teaching the Portuguese specialty, for a period of 4 years, he teaching the language courses, I teaching the literature courses. I was in this group for a long time, around 15 years. I also called on Portuguese experts from the Institute of Linguistics, Mariana Ploae, for example, but also others. The basis, however, was this small nucleus of language and literature that these two people served. So, Portuguese was first taught at the University of Bucharest, since 1974.

Then, the teaching of Portuguese spread to other universities in Romania - in Cluj, where the great linguist Marian Papahagi was, in Constanța and in the university of Iași. There was even an officialization of the importance of the Portuguese language, by the fact that in certain high schools in Bucharest we had classes taught in Portuguese.

&In 2000, the then president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, made an official visit to Romania, he was amazed when I took him to an exhibition with books by Portuguese authors translated into Romanian over the years. There were over 45 authors. This while, from Romanian to Portuguese, only a few writers had been translated. The exhibition showed how important Portuguese has become for our language, to what extent the late appearance of Portuguese in the curricula of literature students was compensated by a wealth of interests and concerns, just as it was for other Romance languages.

To this day, those who teach Portuguese in various universities in the country are, normally, graduates of our Bucharest department, and who in the meantime have managed to do various internships, travel on scholarships, and pursue master's degrees. In this way, a network of Romanian Portuguese teachers was created that we hope will develop at the same pace in the coming years.