Transcending the physical condition of the book as a paper medium, most of the contributors to the 30th issue (2/2022) of AIC deal with (journalistic, historic and poetic) metadiscourse. Several authors also approach intertextuality across centuries, resorting to a spectrum of literary voices. The articles in the present volume cover a generous span of time, spreading from Late Antiquity (with the Christian poet Prudentius) to the 20th century, with trend-setting writers (such as Borges and Naipaul), women writers authoring historical novels (such as Sarah Dunant, Rodica Ojog-Braşoveanu and Ileana Vulpescu), Proletcult Romanian writers, even journalists (such as Ryszard Kapuściński). The topics here developed are centred around
authorial challenges concerning literary production: the problem of writing Christian poetry in Late Antiquity, the transition from a prescriptural tradition to significant literary achievements, book writing as a propaganda tool or as a game, the feminine “touch” in the historical novel, the authorial striving towards THE holistic
transtemporal book (an all-embracing book of books).