Knowledge gap

One of the main problems affecting post-communist literary life in Central and Eastern Europe is the scarcity of financial resources. Before, the only value took into account in supporting the publication of a book was the conformity with the one-party ideology. After, the writers needed to face the "market opportunity" as well as the low state budget for the edition houses. The book become a business in itself, as the interest of the public - aparently high during communism for intellectual activities, but also because not any other sources of open information allowed - shifted towards a "softer" agenda, as set by the media or the daily problems, including the puzzled reality of the post-communist world.

For the writers belonging to the ethnic minorities, the gap between them and the writers of the "majorities" increased. Hungarians writers in Romania, for example, are writting in Hungarian, go to book-fairs in Hungary and are considered as part of the Hungarian literature. The possibility to reach the larger audience in Romania is almost impossible, mostly in the area where is no knowledge of Hungarian. The cost of the translations seem to high. The Romanian writers don't have direct access to the works of their colleagues and the interest in the literary, cultural reviews is quite low. All the inquiries made by now among Romanian and Hungarian writers are showing an important gap in the reciprocal knowledge. In fact, the Romanian public is most familiar with works of Esterházy, or Konrád György than of János Székely or Domokos Szilágyi, both of them well known in Hungary, but not yet translated into Romanian.