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"My absence from the Book Fair is above all a protest. In a Romania where the situation is deteriorating on a daily basis...culture too is going through dramatic times," the author said Monday.
Last summer the sudden reorganisation of the Romanian Cultural Institute provoked an international storm when former foreign minister Andrei Marga was appointed head and swiftly announced that the organisation's goal was to "preserve national identity". The move led numerous Romanian creatives to cut ties with the body which had previously been active in the promotion of independent artists, and sparked howls of protest.
Hundreds of intellectuals, including Nobel Laureates Tomas Transtromer from Sweden and Germany's Herta Muller, and acclaimed Romanian film directors Cristian Mungiu and Cristi Puiu, denounced the changes as a "purge" and as an attempt to force culture into a political framework.
"The ICR's new direction has taken us back four decades", to the time of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his "kulturniks", communist activists in charge of culture, said Cartarescu.
"Mr Marga's team insults Romania's most important artists and is waging a war against Romania's best-known intellectuals."
In an interview on Realitatea TV in October, Marga implied that Cartarescu had been "privileged" by the former management of the ICR, when it came to the number of books he has had translated and published abroad, saying that the lists of authors put up to publishing houses for translation were drawn up based on 'purely subjective' criteria.
"It was claimed that the Romanian state had spent an enormous amount of tax payers' money on my trips abroad and the translation of my work, I was named 'an agent of political propaganda abroad', the value of my work was put in doubt, I was insulted day after day..." Cartarescu said.
"In such circumstances, how could I fulfil my role as a envoy for Romanian culture abroad, given that this role has been systematically denied by the management of the ICR?"
He went on to denounce the Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta's scheduled attendance at the event, which starts on Friday, saying that his "moral culpability will forever stain the image of Romanian culture" after several university commissions found him guilty of plagiarising his PhD thesis.
Ponta denies plagiarism. Today he announced that he would not be attending the Book Fair as planned, saying, "some people, always the same ones, don't miss a single opportunity to provoke scandal and ridicule (Romania)".
Several other intellectuals, including the philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Plesu, have also chosen to boycott the event.
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Last summer the sudden reorganisation of the Romanian Cultural Institute provoked an international storm when former foreign minister Andrei Marga was appointed head and swiftly announced that the organisation's goal was to "preserve national identity". The move led numerous Romanian creatives to cut ties with the body which had previously been active in the promotion of independent artists, and sparked howls of protest.
Hundreds of intellectuals, including Nobel Laureates Tomas Transtromer from Sweden and Germany's Herta Muller, and acclaimed Romanian film directors Cristian Mungiu and Cristi Puiu, denounced the changes as a "purge" and as an attempt to force culture into a political framework.
"The ICR's new direction has taken us back four decades", to the time of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his "kulturniks", communist activists in charge of culture, said Cartarescu.
"Mr Marga's team insults Romania's most important artists and is waging a war against Romania's best-known intellectuals."
In an interview on Realitatea TV in October, Marga implied that Cartarescu had been "privileged" by the former management of the ICR, when it came to the number of books he has had translated and published abroad, saying that the lists of authors put up to publishing houses for translation were drawn up based on 'purely subjective' criteria.
"It was claimed that the Romanian state had spent an enormous amount of tax payers' money on my trips abroad and the translation of my work, I was named 'an agent of political propaganda abroad', the value of my work was put in doubt, I was insulted day after day..." Cartarescu said.
"In such circumstances, how could I fulfil my role as a envoy for Romanian culture abroad, given that this role has been systematically denied by the management of the ICR?"
He went on to denounce the Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta's scheduled attendance at the event, which starts on Friday, saying that his "moral culpability will forever stain the image of Romanian culture" after several university commissions found him guilty of plagiarising his PhD thesis.
Ponta denies plagiarism. Today he announced that he would not be attending the Book Fair as planned, saying, "some people, always the same ones, don't miss a single opportunity to provoke scandal and ridicule (Romania)".
Several other intellectuals, including the philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Plesu, have also chosen to boycott the event.
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