ICR Romanian Cultural Institute London

Romanian writer and philosopher Emil Cioran @ Penguin Books

Renowned Romanian writer and philosopher Emil Cioran's book A Short History of Decay is part of the new Penguin Books ambitious project entitled Ten extraordinary Central European Classics.
The book (published in 1949) is Cioran’s nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in midtwentieth-century Europe. Illuminating and brutally honest, A Short History of Decay dissects Man’s decadence in a remarkable series of moving and beautiful pieces.

Born in 1911 in Rasinari, a small village in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, Emil Cioran wrote his first five books in Romanian. Some of these are collections of brief essays, others are collections of aphorisms. Cioran also wrote lyrical and expansive meditations that were often metaphysical in nature and whose recurrent themes were death, despair, solitude, history, music, saintliness and the mystics - all of which are themes that one finds again in his French writings. A prolific publicist, he became a well-known figure, along with Mircea Eliade, Constantin Noica, and his future close friend Eugene Ionesco (with whom he shared the Royal Foundation's Young Writers Prize in 1934 for his first book, On the Heights of Despair).

The series takes the reader on a political, social and cultural journey from the optimism of the pre 1914 Central Europe to the horrors of the Cold War. The books are designed to showcase some of the remarkable writing from the region: including novels and short stories, dystopian satire, short fables, through memoirs and essays. Central European Classics is designed to transform this wildly disparate group of authors - disparate in form, experience, political views - from their previous roles as guardians of an oppressed, violated or ruined culture into simply being one of the best, fascinating writers.
Penguin press release

Click here for the full list of authors.

The launch of the series will take place on 15 May 2010 at SSEES in a seminar called At the heart of Central Europe: great writers and the ruptures of the 20th century.
Among those participating at the seminar will be Dr Michal Žantovský, Czech Ambassador to the UK; HE Dr Emil Brix, Austrian Ambassador to the UK; writer and academic Eva Hoffman; writer Stephen Vizinczey; Dr Rajendra Chitnis, Senior Lecturer at Bristol University and Dr Peter Zusi (UCL SSEES).
The event will provide an opportunity to discuss the books and their context with the panels of speakers.

When: Saturday 15 May 2010, 2-5pm;
Where: Wilkins Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, South Cloisters, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT;
Free entrance.