About 150 writers from 50 countries are expected to take part in an international literature festival scheduled to be held in the German capital Berlin in September, the festival’s organizers announced on Wednesday.
Organisers said well-known writers such as Rachel Cusk, Olivia Laing and Elif Shafak will present their new works to literature lovers at the event, which receives around 20,000 visitors annually.
For his part, the festival’s curator, the writer Helon Habila, who hails from Nigeria and resides in the United States, believes that the slogan “A Strange New World” for the 24th edition of the festival embodies in a literary way the spirit of the times between the pandemic, wars and climate change.
The festival will include a discussion event titled “What works against the Alternative for Germany?”, which will include Katarina Barley, Member of the European Parliament for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, former German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, and Katja Kipping, a politician from the Left Party. As part of the special section of the festival dedicated to young people, called the “Youth Programme”, the festival offers services to young visitors, including free workshops for the first time and a free book for each participant in each workshop.
The events of this part have been delayed slightly due to the summer holidays, and will take place between September 9 and 18, while the main programme of the festival will take place between September 5 and 14, less than a week after the parliamentary elections scheduled to be held in the states of Thuringia and Saxony (eastern Germany, where the AfD is most popular).
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