From tales of migration to reflections on belonging and alienation. Through their work, ten European authors will explore the many sides of ‘Writers as Travellers’, this year’s theme of The European Literature Night. What is the meaning of movement and borders for writers, whether they travel across countries or explore their own cultural landscapes?
How are exile and alienation from one’s own country reflected in literature? By looking at writers as travellers, we seek to uncover nuanced diasporic narratives in European literature, fostering understanding and empathy for the myriad of human experiences that bind us together.
The European Literature Night 2024 brings together authors from across the continent who will explore this year’s theme: ‘Writers as travellers’. Through the lens of literature, we dive into the complexities of borders, belonging, and otherness within a European context.
Previous editions of the European Literature night at De Balie were held in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
About the speakers
Miguel Bonnefoy is a French-Venezualean author. He was born in 1986 to a Venezuelan mother (who has been Cultural Attaché to the Embassy of Venezuela in Paris) and a Chilean father. Miguel Bonnefoy writes in the language of his studies: French. In his novel Heritage, inspired by his family history, Miguel Bonnefoy tells the story of exile in Latin America, at the crossroad of cultures. Heritage has been translated into Dutch as Erfgoed (De Bezige Bij, 2021) with the support of the Programme Nouvelles Voix by Institut français NL.
Josef Pánek is a Czech writer and scientist specializing in computational molecular genetics. He pursued his studies in Prague, lived and worked in Norway and Australia, and has extensively travelled. Currently residing in Czechia, he wrote the novel “Láska v době globálních klimatických změn” (Love in the Time of Global Climate Change, 2017), for which he was awarded the Czech literary award Magnesia Litera in 2018. The novel has been translated into Dutch, French, German, Polish, Italian, Croatian, Serbian and Romanian.
Loranne Vella is a Brussels-based Maltese writer, translator and performer. Her most recent work is the novel Marta Marta, which won the 2023 National Book Prize. An extract from Marta Marta, translated into English by Kat Storace, has been selected for publication in The White Review Translation Issue in April 2024. Vella is co-founder and co-editor of the online Maltese literary journal Aphroconfuso.
Mira Feticu was born in Romania, where she studied Romanian and French literature. In 2005 she moved to the Netherlands for love, and subsequently she also fell in love with the Dutch language. She wrote multiple novels in Dutch. In 2021 she wrote Liefdesverklaring aan de Nederlandse taal, in which she declared her love for the Dutch language.
Liliana Corobca was born in the Republic of Moldova and is a writer and researcher of Communist Censorship and Romanian Exile in Romania. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Letters of the State University of Moldova, doctor in philology at the University of Bucharest. She currently lives and works in Bucharest. Among the nine novels she wrote, the most translated and awarded is “Kinderland”, the story of three children from a post-Soviet village, whose parents work abroad.
Juan Gómez Barcena is a Spanish writer. With his first book of stories, Los que duermen (2012), he won the Tormenta Award for Best New Author. In 2014 he published El cielo de Lima, a novel which has been translated into English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dutch and Greek. The monumental Lo demás es aire (2023), won the Ciutat de Barcelona Prize for Literature and Vanity Fair Prize for best novel, consolidated him as one of the most relevant authors in Spanish literature.
Kateryna Babkina is a Ukrainian author and playwright. She’s the author of novels, short stories and children’s books. She has been translated into eleven languages and her plays have been staged in different countries. A short movie based on one of her stories was screened at Cannes Film Festival. After Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, she has been living in London.
Dr. Elio Baldi is assistant professor of Italian Studies and Literature at the University of Amsterdam. He studied History and Italian Literature and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, and got his PhD at the University of Warwick. He is specialized in the work and reception of Italo Calvino. Tonight, he will speak about travel in the work of Calvino.
Katja Riemann is one of Germany’s best-known actresses, who moves with a fine sense between commercial cinema and arthouse, as well as being at home in theatre and the world of music. Besides that, she is a UNICEF ambassador and received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2010 and the Bad Iburg Courage Award in 2016 for her commitment. In 2020, she published her non-fiction book about humanitarian work ‘Jeder hat. Niemand darf. Projektreisen.’ Her latest book ‘Zeit der Zäune. Orte der Flucht.‘ tells of places of refuge to which Katja Riemann travelled. Where are these places and how do people live in the interim?
Speakers
Also in De Balie:
With Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi & CATPC Collective
In the run-up to the Venice Biennale 2024 Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi en the Congolese artists’ collective CATPC will give a preview in De Balie to the Dutch entry and elaborate on the story behind their choices.
Tonight we discuss the future of European farming with young farmers and Europarliamentarian Mohammed Chahim. Can climate adaptation in agriculture be organized in a just way – that protects jobs as well as the planet? And how can we take critical steps in a debate that is frustrated by mutual image-building and pitchfork politics?
Wie let er op Brussel?
Kunnen democratische waakhonden zoals volksvertegenwoordigers, maatschappelijke organisaties, de media en toezichthouders voldoende controle uitoefenen om de Brusselse macht gezond te houden?
