What's Up With Romania?

From Literary Saloon:

We missed their announcement from a few weeks ago, but Jennifer Schuessler recently mentioned it at their Paper Cuts weblog: The New York Times Book Review is now available in Romanian, the only international edition of the NYTBR, licensed to Editura Univers and with a print run of 40,000 to start off with.

And from Shelf Awareness:

Anthony Frost, a new English-language bookshop in Bucharest, Romania, “has become popular among students, academics and expats, especially for its fair pricing system—which sees English-language books on sale for the same cost as in the West,” the Diplomat Bucharest reported.

As to the name?

Why “Anthony Frost?” Co-owner Vlad Niculescu said it’s the name of a friend who helped foster the three owners’ collective passion for English. “He doesn’t know we’ve named the bookshop after him yet. It may be a surprise.”

Both of these things are kind of cool, although I wish this was more of an equal flow and a Romanian book review was being translated into English along with more Romanian lit. (Well, we’ve got our eye on a major, major Romanian work for Open Letter, but I’ve got to keep that under wraps for now . . . )

Regardless, maybe Sara from NYRB is wrong about 2008 being the “Year of Hungary” . . . it just might be the “Year of Romania,” thanks in no small part to the awesome job the people at the Romanian Cultural Institute are doing to promote Romanian art.