Nicolae Manolescu

Who is Nicolae Manolescu?

Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years. He is a Corresponding Member of the Romanian Academy since 1997. On 28th of March 2013 he was elected as a Fully Member of the Romanian Academy after 16 years as a Corresponding Member of the same Academy.

During the civil unrest of the 1960s, because of critical opinions voiced against Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej and the Romanian Communist regime, he was expelled from the University of Bucharest, where he was studying philology.

After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he was a founding member of the Civic Alliance in November 1990, and, after July 1991, began a political career as leader of the minor Civic Alliance Party, a group that had split from the Alliance to pursue a more political activism, being its candidate for presidency in the 1992 elections; Manolescu subsequently represented the party in the Senate. In 1998, the PAC merged with the National Liberal Party, and he was a member of the PNL National Council until 2000, when he resigned his position and retreated from political life.