#lbm23

“Recently, he has been haunted by the idea that when in love, he has to give a lot if he wants to receive at least a little bit back. […] He hadn’t taken into account that out of the many things he has to give, the other person wants only a little. Equally, the little he himself accepts from the other person is his very own narrow and rigid selection. His choosing. Similarly, to how he only remembers a sentence or two from a book that he read in its totality.”

— Ana Marwan, Verpuppt

Tomorrow the Leipzig Book Fair opens its doors. Guests will include authors from Southeast Europe who will present their novels, poems and stories (sometimes about storytelling itself), among them Elona Beqiraj, Samira Kentrić, Ana Marwan, Jana Radičević, Uroš Prah and Adrian Schiop. Together with translators and interpreters, publishers and partners, and the TRADUKI team, they will make our programme come alive.

We will talk about the joys of crossing borders and Austria as a land of translation, about the melancholy of childhood and the euphoria of the end of the world, about antechambers and closed gates, about fleeting love (and Notizbuch der Liebe), about visions of the future and the nostalgia of the past, and, last but not least, about the transient nature of memory. We leave it up to you what will remain of the book fair after the hum of the four-day-long shenanigans dies down. Perhaps a book or a phrase, or perhaps just (or at least) a word.

Prior to it all, we would like to congratulate Mircea Cărtărescu on winning the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his novel ‘Solenoid’, Georgi Gospodinov on making the International Booker Prize shortlist with his novel ‘Time Shelter’ & all nominees for the EU Prize for Literature, including Ag Apolloni and Anna Ospelt! The winners of the EU Prize for Literature will be announced at the Leipzig Book Fair.

It is an honour and pleasure that the above mentioned authors, in one form or another, are part of this year’s TRADUKI programme.