The 7th edition of the Bookfest International Book Show, with no less than 300 events, will start today at the Romexpo Exhibition Centre in Bucharest and stay open throughout June 3.

Organisers say Bookfest will be a real cultural marathon, with publishing houses, book distributors and print houses displaying over more than 4,000 square metres. The show will also include book launches, reading sessions and meetings with Romanian and foreign authors, film screenings, drama shows for children and French languages classes.

This year's edition of Bookfest has France as the guest of honour, at which stand the Embassy of France in Bucharest and the French Institute of Bucharest will stage a series of events. Television producer and cultural show moderator Bernard Pivot, authors Michel Houellebecq, Nedim Gurselm, Sylvie Germain, Yasmina Khadra and Yann Apperry as well as editor Jean Mattern in charge with foreign literature at the Gallimard Publishing House and academician Dominique Fernandez, author of 'Rhapsodie roumaine' (Romanian Rhapsody) have confirmed they will attend Bookfest and meet the visitors.

This evening, Bookfest will relocate for some hours to the headquarters of the Lowendal Foundation in No. 1, Gh. Cantacuzino Square, for a night of European literatures, a project coordinated in Bucharest by the Romanian Culture Institute.

Books will meet art films in a 'Film-inspiring Books' event that will introduce visitors, for free, to films based on screenplays adapted from woks of renowned French authors, including the film based on Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules elementaires (Atomised).

The links between literature and films will also be the topic of a debate to be staged by Observator Cultural on May 31 as part of a Formula 3 series of events, when the Association of Romanian Publishers (AER) will bring to the public's attention the status of book publishers in Romania and elsewhere in Europe, in an event where invited to attend are publishing house representatives from Romania, Poland and France. AGERPRES