Professor Florin Manolescu in 2009.

Romanian literary critic and sf/f writer Florin Manolescu died December 13 reports Europa SF.

Manolescu wrote the first doctoral thesis about science fiction in Romania, published in 1980 by the Univers Press, as „Literatura S.F.”

His short story collection The Mentalists won the Romanian Science Fiction & Fantasy Society Award in 2009.

Manolescu’s “Serendipty” was translated into English by Silvia Cora and Nigel Walker and published in Translation Café (no. 130, August 2012), the online magazine of Bucharest University. It is a free read here.

He taught at the University of Bucharest from 1968-1992. In 1993 he was hired by Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany where he was promoted to full Professor. From 2010-2014 he returned to the University of Bucharest as a Visiting Professor.

Among the many awards for he received for his scholarship and literary criticism are the Maiorescu Prize, awarded by the Romanian Academy; the Serban Cioculescu  Prize for Literary History, awarded by the National Museum of the Romanian Literature; The Romanian Writers Union Prize; The Romanian Cultural Institute Award; and the 1967 Annual Award for Literary Criticism (Junimea Award), awarded by the literary magazine Amfiteatru.