As a literature festival, every year we have a dream list of great, relevant international writers we would like to have as guests. We consult with publishers and agents, make plans and concepts. We call, email, write letters. Usually some of it succeeds, sometimes bitterly little. But this year we are lucky: in addition to all the great writers we already Exploring Stories and Bookfest, we can now, to our great joy, no fewer than four Add fantastic writers coming to give a Book Talk at ILFU.
On Monday, September 22, we welcome English nature writer Robert Macfarlane and on Wednesday 24 September is Elizabeth Strout guest, known for instance for her novels about Olive Kitteridge. Both can be seen at TivoliVredenburg. Deborah Levy comes to the Utrecht Library on Thursday 2 October. Her bestseller Warm Milk has been filmed and can be seen in all cinemas this summer. On Friday 3 October, intellectual and feminist icon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at KABUL à GoGo, a well-known club in Utrecht.
You can find more information for each author below. Ticket sales started today.
Monday 22 September
Robert Macfarlane
On 22 September 2025, English nature writer Robert Macfarlane is coming to ILFU Festival. A dream guest who until now was always too busy walking in the mountains, digging underground, swimming in disappearing rivers, but now could finally come to the Netherlands.
This year his new book was published Does a river live?, in which he takes his readers on a personal journey along three rivers. Macfarlane sets out with indigenous experts and activists, who show him how river life is increasingly threatened and destroyed. Robert Macfarlane is a great literary writer, engaged with the current world around him and an inspired speaker - anyone who hears him speak will hang on his every word.
For more information, click here.
Wednesday 24 September
Elizabeth Strout
A few years ago, we got to meet her online, and this year she is in the flesh at the ILFU Festival: Elizabeth Strout!
Elizabeth Strout is a story writer who has shaped a whole world over the years, with many characters recurring in different books. The gruff Olive Kitteridge with her big heart, the writer Lucy Barton who has long hidden the deep poverty she grew up in, the gentle Bob Burgess, his brother and the hurts of their childhood. Sometimes a book is about one of them and Strout shows her psychological strength, sometimes about how their lives touch with which she paints beautiful social portraits. In her virtuoso branching stories and portraits, Strout, Pulitzer Prize-winner with a bevy of fans around the world, shows herself to be a master of showing both friction and intimacy; of the indomitability and inadequacy of life.
'All ordinary people are extraordinary,' she said in an interview. You then have to be able to show that - and she can do that like no other.
For more information, click here.
Thursday 2 October
Deborah Levy
Some writers so morph literature that they change it. Not with big words and programmes but with a unique style or unexpected process that they actually add something to what was already there. One such writer is Deborah Levy. With her trilogy, which she herself calls a 'living biography', she has established a new genre, as narrative as it is essayistic, as stylised as it is personal.
The popularity of Levy's books is probably partly due to her tone, the irresistible combination of feminism, philosophical sharpness and everyday details. Like no other, Levy writes about how to hold your own as a woman in a male-dominated world, and what role 'marginal' desires - from shoes to dream houses - (may) play in it. Her novel Warm milk has been filmed with Fiona Shaw, Emma Mackey and Vicky Krieps and will run in cinemas from this summer.
Click here for more information.
Friday 3 October
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is undoubtedly one of the most influential voices of her generation. She broke through in 2006 with the novel Half a yellow sun and confirmed her reputation with Amerikanah (2012), a great migrant novel that was hailed by many as one of the best books of the 21st century. Adichie has been moving smoothly between literature, politics and pop culture for years, winning readers around the world with her feminist message and sharp style.
In her new novel Dream Count Adichie interweaves the stories of four African women around themes of friendship, womanhood, trauma and motherhood. We follow the lives of Chiamaka, Zikora, Omelogor and Kadiatou, who all struggle with the choices they (have to) make. Most of the emphasis is on the harrowing story of Kadiatou, a character the writer modelled on Nafissatou Diallo, the valet who was assaulted in a New York hotel room by former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011.
With her Ted Talk and essay of the same name We should all be feminists (2014) definitively established Adichie as an intellectual and feminist icon. The essay also earned her a pop-star status, which is rare in literature: in Sweden, all 16-year-olds received the essay as a gift, Beyoncé sampled excerpts from her text, and events with Adichie have invariably sold out well in advance ever since.
Click here for more information.
