Polirom or Editura Polirom ("Polirom" Publishing House) is a Romanian publishing house with a tradition of publishing classics of international literature and also various titles in the fields of social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The company was founded in February 1995 in Iași. The first title published by Polirom was For Europe, by Adrian Marino. As of 2023, Polirom has published about 8,300 titles, in over 60 series and collections, amounting to 13 million copies in all. The editorial profile includes both fiction (35%) and nonfiction (65%). [1]
In 2008, the company published 700 new titles, in a range of over 70 collections ranging from self-help to modern classics such as Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities and from textbooks to "chick lit". [2]
Polirom claims to be Romania's most profitable publisher as well as the publisher with the highest turn-over. It now has four major offices in Romania, including one in Bucharest. [2]
Cristian Tudor Popescu is a Romanian journalist, essayist, engineer, short-story writer and political commentator. Author of science fiction stories during his youth, he also hosted talk shows for various television stations, and had contributions as a literary critic and translator.
Norman Manea is a Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He lives in the United States, where he is a Professor and writer in residence at Bard College.
Leonard Oprea is a Romanian novelist, poet, and essayist. In the late 1980s, he wrote two books of fiction that were banned by the Communist regime and gained him repute among dissidents. Following the 1989 Revolution, the books were published but did not attract significant notice during the political upheaval of the time. He left Romania for the United States in 1999, after which the pair of previously banned works was once again released. In the 2000s, he wrote the fictional series Theophil Magus, and by 2020 this series included 17 separate titles. Piero Scaruffi considers his work "Cele Nouă Învățături ale lui Theophil Magus despre Magia Transilvană/ The Nine Teachings Of Theophil Magus On Transylvanian Magic" (2000) among the ten best novels in the Romanian language.
Matei Alexe Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana.
Victor Neumann is a Romanian historian, political analyst, and professor at the West University in Timișoara. He is a well-known specialist in the recent cultural and intellectual histories of Eastern and Central Europe. Much of his work deals with Conceptual History, history of political thought and theory of history. As of October 2013, he is Director of the Timișoara Art Museum.
Mihaela Miroiu is a Romanian political theorist and feminist philosopher, the most prominent activist for women's rights and a very well known activist for Roma rights, more generally, for minorities rights. She is currently Professor of Political science at the Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest.
Dorin Tudoran is a Romanian poet, essayist, journalist, and dissident. A resident of the United States since 1985, he has authored more than fifteen books of poetry, essays, and interviews.
Andrei Oișteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the history of antisemitism. After the Romanian Revolution, he also became noted for his articles and essays on the Holocaust in Romania.
Editura Ion Creangă was a publishing house based in Bucharest, Romania. Founded as a state-run company under communist rule and named after the 19th-century writer Ion Creangă, it ranked high among Romanian publishers of children's literature, fantasy literature and science fiction. Its activity resulted in many Romanian-language translations of world children's classics, among which were bestselling versions of Jules Verne's complete works and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The company also stood at the core of a phenomenon in local book illustration, assigning contracts to recognized artists such as Sandu Florea, Val Munteanu, Lívia Rusz and Eugen Taru.
Șerban Nicolae Foarță is a contemporary Romanian writer. A translator, essayist, playwright, prose writer and even illustrator, he is most widely known for his poetry books.
Editura Minerva is one of the largest publishing houses in Romania. Located in Bucharest, it is known, among other things, for publishing classic Romanian literature, children's books, and scientific books.
Gabriel Andreescu is a Romanian human rights activist and political scientist born on 8 April 1952 in Buzău. He is one of the few Romanian dissidents who openly opposed Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Communist regime in Romania.
The Society for Romanian Studies (SRS), founded in 1973, is an international inter-disciplinary academic organization dedicated to Romanian studies. It draws its members – junior and senior scholars, graduate students, and government experts – primarily from North America, Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Western Europe. Through its activities, the SRS wishes to facilitate academic exchange within and across a multitude of disciplines, including history, sociology, geography, anthropology and ethnography, political science, philosophy, law and justice studies, literature and linguistics, economics and business, international affairs, religious, gender, film and media studies, art history, music and education. The society understands Romanian studies broadly to encompass political, socioeconomic and cultural developments in Romania and the Republic of Moldova, the situation of their ethnic minorities and their relations with the ethnic majority, as well as the position of Romanians and Moldovans living outside those countries.
Lucian Dan Teodorovici is a Romanian writer, scriptwriter and theatre director.
Radu Pavel Gheo is a Romanian fiction writer and essayist. Gheo is a member of PEN Club from Romania and of the Romanian Writers' Union.
Tatiana Niculescu is a Romanian writer and former senior editor of the Bucharest Romanian Bureau of the BBC WS. She previously worked for almost 10 years as a radio presenter and producer of the World Service in London. Her non fiction novel Deadly Confession was published in 2006 by Humanitas Publishing House. It was followed by Judges’ Book. A second edition and e-book of Deadly Confession were issued by Polirom Publishing House in 2012. The novels caused a sensation in her native country and inspired the film director Cristian Mungiu who produced and directed the film Beyond the Hills based on the same novels. The film won the award for the best screenplay at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. In 2007 a stage version of the books directed by the American-Romanian director Andrei Serban had been performed at La MaMa Theatre in New York. In 2008, the theatre performance was staged in Paris at the Béhague Palace. Peter Brook and Pascal Bruckner attended the performance.
Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Group and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927
Bogdan Suceavă is a Romanian-American mathematician and writer.
Cartea Românească is a publishing house in Bucharest, Romania, founded in 1919. Disestablished by the communist regime in 1948, it was restored under later communism, in 1970, when it functioned as the official imprint of the Writers' Union of Romania (USR). The USR maintained its control of the business following the Romanian Revolution of 1989 and, from 2005 to 2016, shared the brand with a private company, Polirom. By 2016, this venture was noted for its authors' series, including in particular Gheorghe Crăciun and Octavian Soviany. The protocol with the USR was not renewed that year and, as of 2017, Cartea Românească is a brand shared between the USR and Editura Paralela 45.
Ileana Mălăncioiu is a contemporary Romanian poet, essayist, journalist, dissident, and activist. She has been a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy since 2013.