COMMON GROUND. Literature from Southeast Europe is in its third year. In 2020 and 2021 we covered topics, which moved authors personally. We questioned how society and politics deal with the challenges of the past, present, and future, and showed what sort of realities authors give a literary voice to.
This year’s Common Ground programme is titled: US AND THEM.
In our third year as the Region in Focus at the Leipzig Book Fair, we raise the question of differences an things in common, of elements that bind us together and cut us off from another, of us, ourselves, and the other. Is the Southeast of Europe really that different from our surroundings, from what is familiar to us? What are imagined, and what, real distances? How big are the differences between us and them, between the Here and the There? Is a differentiation of the world into “East” and “West” still (or again!) topical?
There is nothing wrong with wanting to put order, structure, outlines and boundaries into the chaos that is one’s existence. This is how one’s own identity takes shape and is moulded, this is how one can reappraise and reassess it. Problems arise, when these assessments and one’s own existence is valued higher and as the proper way in respect to the lives of others – when we take on a position of superiority towards the other. And it does not matter from what direction we look at them.
US AND THEM brings together authors in whose books the characters are adamant about going their own path in life. They are filled with stories in which children refuse to take on their prescribed roles and question assumed designations and stances. We present books about people, who have to suffer lasting consequences because of decisions taken by shortsighted people in power. But these are also books about dreams, hopes, and fears – familiar to each and every one who tries to master life.
We invite you to listen to the voices from Southeast Europe. So „THEM“ may become a part of „US“ – and vice versa.