OCTAVIAN SOVIANY 

OCTAVIAN SOVIANY (b. 1954, Braşov) made his debut with the poetry collection entitled Ucenicia bătrânului alchimist (The Apprenticeship of the Old Alchemist) in 1983. He has published volumes of poetry (Cartea lui Benedict/Benedict’s Book, Scrisori din Arcadia/Letters from Arcadia, Alte poeme de modă veche/Other Old Style Poems, Dilecta, Pulberea, praful şi revoluția/The Dust, the Dirt and the Revolution, Călcâiul lui Magellan/Magellan’s Heel, Adda, Viața de după viață/The Life Beyond Life, Poeme de dragoste/Love Poems, E noapte în arhipelag/It’s Nighttime in the Archipelago, Șaizeci și șase/Sixty-Six), novels (Arhivele de la Monte Negro/The Monte Negro Archives, Viaţa lui Kostas Venetis/The Life of Kostas Venetis, Moartea lui Siegfried/Siegfried’s Death, Năluca/The Apparition, Casa din strada Sirenelor/The House in Mermaids’ Street, Micul saturnian/The Little Saturnian, Îmbarcarea către Cythera/Embarking for Cythera, Corabia beată/The Drunken Ship, Capul de faun/The Faun’s Head), drama, pieces of criticism and translations from the world’s literature – both prose and poetry (Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Apollinaire, Dumas, Saint-Exupery).  He has translated a number of the most representative books by Jacques Ellul (Métamorphose du bourgeois/Metamorfoza burghezului, La subversion du christianisme/Subminarea creștinismului, Trahison de l’occident/Trădarea Occidentului, L’homme et l’argent/Omul și Banul, L’empire du non-sens/Împărăția Nonsensului, Le système technicien/Sistemul tehnicist). He has been awarded several literary prizes: The Bucharest Writers’ Association Prize (1994, 2004, 2010), the Prose Prize awarded by Radio România Cultural (2012), the Poetry Prize awarded by Observator cultural magazine (2013), the prize for the Poetry Book of the Year (2014), the National Prose Prize awarded by Ziarul de Iași, the Lyceum prize awarded by Observator cultural magazine (2016), the “Cezar Ivănescu” prize awarded by the League of the Albanians in Romania, the “Nichita Stănescu” Great Poetry Prize (2024), etc. His work has been translated and published in Spain, Bulgaria and Slovenia. Excerpts from his work have been included in several anthologies of Romanian prose and poetry published in France, Sweden, Portugal, etc.