Romania Guest of Honour at Book Festival Budapest

Last year's book festival

Publishers from more than 20 countries will present some 50,000 volumes on 1,500 square metres at the Millenáris. Closing times will be pushed back to 7pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and until 8pm on Sunday.

 

The Fogadó building will host exhibitors showing children's books, comics and textbooks. All other publishers will exhibit in the House of Future building.

 

Publishers from Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Russia and China, in addition to ones from Hungary and Romania, which will have a special 100-square-metre stand, will be at the fair.

 

Almost 300 professional and cultural events are planned for the festival programme, which has not yet been finalised. Young writers from the European Union will be showcased for the ninth time at the festival, and a special section will highlight debut works. Hungary will show Ferenc Vincze's first effort.

 

Hungarian publisher Magvető will publish Ludmila Ulitskaya's novel Daniel Stein, translated by Géza Morcsányi, a few weeks before the festival. The hero of the book, which is based on a true story, is a Polish Jew who converts to Catholicism while hiding from the Nazis in a monastery. He becomes an interpreter for the Gestapo, but secretly works to save other Jews from the death camps. After the war, Stein becomes a monk and travels to the Holy Land, but there too, he must fight for his idealism.

 

Many of Ulitskaya's previous books have been translated into Hungarian and published by Magvető, among them Medea and Her Children, Women's Lies, The Funeral Party, Sonechka, Sincerely Yours, Shurik and Kukotsky's Case.

 

Ulitskaya will sign books at least three times during the festival. On April 23, she will attend a public talk, after which she will be presented with a Budapest Grand Prize. Ulitskaya will also hold a lecture at the Eötvös Loránd University of Science in Budapest and participate in a roundtable discussion at a conference organised by Pécs University of Science and Ráday Book House.

 

During the festival, the Merlin Theatre of Budapest will stage Ulitskaya's play Russian Jam, translated by Annamária Radnai and directed by László Magács.

 

Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)

Photo: Eszter Gordon/MTI