 |
The country guest of honour at this year's festival will be Romania.
Romania's Ministry of Culture will bring the most modern and most interesting Romanian writers as guests to Hungary, said Romanian Culture institute director Brindusa Armanca. Nowhere else in the world are there so many Romanian books in translation as in Hungary, he added.
Another highlight on the programme will be a festival within a festival: the European First Book Festival, featuring the first published works of young authors from Belgium, Denmark, the UK, Croatia, Poland, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and Slovenia, said Budapest International Book Festival director Péter László Zentai. Hungary will be represented at the mini-festival by Ferenc Vincze, whose first book is called Cat's Eye.
The writer guest of honour at this year's festival will be the Russian author Ljudmila Ulickaja. Ulickaja will be presented the Budapest Prize by Mayor Gábor Demszky at the opening of the festival on April 23, and her Hungarian publisher, Magvető Kiadó, will present her latest work, Daniel Stein, Interpreter. The book, which could be called postmodern, is an exciting collage of fictional and half-fictional documents, said Magvető Kiadó director Géza Morcsányi.
Other authors that will appear at the festival include the Polish writer Pavel Huelle, the American Robert Charles Wilson and the Finn Sirkku Peltola. The Hungarian-born American actor Tony Curtis will bring his book American Prince.
Hungarian publishers will bring several hundred new books to the festival, said Zentai. The festival will feature readings, performances, talks and concerts. Professional photography associations in Hungary and Romania will show a joint exhibition of works by Ernő Ciupe-Bartha, a photographer based in Cluj, called TV Mania.
Photo: Eszter Gordon
