The Great Hall of the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) will host for a month, starting Thursday, an exhibition marking 20 years of promoting Romanian literature abroad through the Translation and Publication Support (TPS) funding programme.

Entitled 'Twenty Years On: The Journey of Romanian Books', the exhibition, curated by Emil Ivanescu and Simina Filat, aims to highlight both the essential importance of translation and continuity, as well as the diverse openings offered by the global world in which we live.

'The 20th anniversary of the Translation and Publication Support programme confirms a goal consistently pursued by the Romanian Cultural Institute: to bring Romanian literature where it belongs. It is a celebration of the solid partnerships built with publishing houses around the world, but above all of the recognition enjoyed by Romanian-language authors on the international stage, alongside outstanding translators. We are marking this milestone through a series of events in Romania and abroad, reaffirming the role of TPS as an essential mechanism for support and promotion and once again bringing the voices of Romanian literature to the attention of publishers and readers worldwide,' ICR president Liviu Sebastian Jicman said, according to a press release sent to AGERPRES.

Between the first volume published abroad with the support of the ICR through the TPS programme — the Czech-language edition of 'Simion Liftnicul (A Novel with Angels and Moldavians)' by Petru Cimpoesu, translated by Jiri Nasinec and published by Dybbuk Publishing House in Prague — and the most recent title — the Swedish edition of the novel 'Theodoros' by Mircea Cartarescu, translated by Inger Johansson and published by Albert Bonniers Forlag — lie hundreds of works by a wide range of Romanian authors, promoted in cultural spaces reached thanks to the enduring power and appeal of books.

From Hungary to Egypt and from Portugal to the United States or Japan, books by Romanian writers published in languages including Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Chinese, Korean, Danish, Hebrew, English, Estonian, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Macedonian, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian and Turkish have travelled more widely over the past two decades than ever before, thanks in part to the funding programme run continuously by the ICR, the release said.

The exhibition is the first in a series of events marking the 20th anniversary in 2026 of the Translation and Publication Support programme, established by the Romanian Cultural Institute to promote Romanian literature abroad.

On 9 March, starting at 11:00, the ICR headquarters will host an international conference, while on 10 March, at 19:00, the Humanitas Cismigiu Bookshop will host the event 'My Love Story with Literature: Mircea Cartarescu in Dialogue with Marian Ochoa de Eribe.' AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Daniel Popescu; EN - writing by: Simona Iacob)