Everything to do with letters
Hartverscheurende dagboekaantekeningen uit de Oekraïne-oorlog vormden voor Nora Krug de basis voor haar nieuwe boek. ‘Het getekende beeld heeft de kracht in zich om een andere kijk te verschaffen op de werkelijkheid.’
With Ben Okri, the Internationales Literatur Festival Berlin (ILB) has brought in the grand master of contemporary literary storytelling. 'See the magic of things around you.'
It was with a certain scepticism, I must confess, that I began Winny Sorgdrager's book "Oxygen of Society. Why Culture is a Government Issue".1 I won't elaborate; let's just say that a book about Dutch cultural policy has been published before. More than once, in fact, and in those books...
Outstanding, wonderful, wonderful - the juries of the two Filter Translation Prizes 2024 were short of words to sing the praises of all 10 nominated translations of the past year. All the nominees made translations so good that the juries became genuinely happy reading them. Still, a choice had to be made: one translated work for adults and one translated children's book stood out...
Wim Landuyt won the 2024 Dutch Poetry Slam Championships in Utrecht, beating seven other finalists. He received the Gouden Vink trophy and €1000. The event, part of the International Literature Festival Utrecht, was judged by both audience and jury. The NK Poetry Slam celebrated its 22nd edition.
New names confirmed: including David Nicholls, Tommy Orange, Maggie Stiefvater, Teun van de Keuken and Carolina Trujillo. ILFU International Literature Festival Utrecht takes place this year from 21 September to 5 October. Some 200 writers and over 20,000 visitors visit ILFU every year. Earlier, ticket sales started for major festival events such as the Night of Poetry, Exploring Stories, the Belle...
Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexijevich will be present during the International Literature Festival Utrecht to receive the Belle van Zuylenring 2024 and deliver the accompanying Belle van Zuylen lecture. Presentation Belle van Zuylenring 2024 During the ILFU International Literature Festival Utrecht (21 September to 5 October), the Utrecht Literature Prizes 2024 will be awarded. The Belle van Zuylenring, an international...
Do the stories of cleaners also have a place in art history? Poet and visual artist Maria Barnas will be artist-in-residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Amsterdam in 2024-25. During her stay, she will research the biography of artist Jo Baer (1929) and how oral history can be used to record art history. Can you also base art history on memories, stories and maybe even gossip? This Artist-in-Residence position is made available annually by NIAS and the Academy of Arts. The work of...
Write your own Ikje and get published. The Ikje on the back page of NRC has been an institution for more than 20 years. Thousands of hilarious, tragic and recognisable incidents by unknown Dutch people captured in 120 words form the chronicles of everyday life. Reason enough for ILFU (International Literature Festival Utrecht) to organise a one-off all-encompassing Ikjes marathon. We call on everyone...
Ten translators in the spotlight in one fell swoop - the nominations for the annual Filter Translation Prizes have been announced! They are all wonderful books, for young and old - and more than scintillating translations.These are the nominations for the Filter Translation Prize 2024: And also five nominations for the Filter Translation Prize 2024 for children's and youth books: The winners The winners will be announced live...
ILFU 2024's festival theme is 'I am many Stories'. This year's ILFU (International Literature Festival Utrecht) will take place from 21 September to 5 October, and carries the motto 'I am many stories', borrowed from Marilyn Monroe. The programme includes regular ingredients such as the Utrecht Book Market, the NK Poetry Slam, the YALFU (Young Adult Festival), Book Talks and...
Ten years after the death of world-famous writer Gabriel García Márquez, the novel he was working on when he left life is published. Seeing Each Other in August is unfinished but highly enjoyable. Died in harness He died in harness, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. The concise novel In August We See Each Other was the book he was working on when he...
After the self-inflicted death of his beloved, writer Matteo Bianchi struggles with his grief, his anger and guilt. With Those Who Are Left Behind, he reaches out to others who went through the same thing. Conflicting feelings 'I hate him. I hate him so much for what he did.' Sometimes Matteo screams at the walls that his beloved S. is an asshole. And an egotist. But...
Mountains, trees, solitary inhabitants... Down in the valley is another 'real' Paolo Cognetti. You could call him the chronicler of mountains and mountain life. Few writers narrate life at altitude, in the middle of nature, far from the hustle and bustle of the city, as beautifully as Italian author Paolo Cognetti. With his filmed bestseller The Eight Mountains, he conquered the...
A sensitive, moving novel about natural and human violence: The Night Trembles by Nadia Terranova is highly recommended. The major earthquakes in Umbria in 2016 are probably still on many people's minds. But who remembers that over a hundred years ago, the south of Italy was hit by a devastating earthquake, the most destructive even in Europe in the 20th...
American writer, filmmaker and artist Miranda July (1974) is coming to Utrecht on Saturday 15 June 2024. For the ILFU literature festival, she will give a one-off Book Talk in TivoliVredenburg about her long-awaited new novel All Fours. Miranda July gained worldwide fame with the 2005 feature film Me and you and everyone we know, for which she wrote the screenplay, directed and starred in...
Writers Pete Wu and Maxim February will each be guest editor-in-chief of ilfu.com, the online platform of literature festival ILFU, for two months from April. During their chief editorship, they will contribute pieces themselves, highlighting themes and authors they find of interest. The daily literary contributions on the platform are free to all. ILFU Members create the stories with their financial contribution...
As a holiday destination, the green, wide Italian valleys are lovely, but living in such a place is less idyllic, Ginevra Lamberti shows in her novel Everybody sleeps in the valley. 'The valley is not a place but a time that will not end, life here is not a time but a place whose exit cannot be found.' Which is not...
Even in a tiny hamlet with seemingly nothing to do, world history is at - or rather under - your feet. In his extraordinary novel The Village of Memories, Juan Gómez Bárcena (39) weaves together centuries of stories. 'I love to challenge myself considerably when writing.' More cows than inhabitants A village...
An outsider or unexpected event that holds up a mirror to characters and turns things upside down - it is a classic literary feature. In the hands of Brazilian writer Autran Dourado, this produced a fascinating novel in which, above all, a lot happens in the main characters' heads. Once Luzia was Maria's nanny, now she babysits...
One of the most famous people to survive Auschwitz, writer Primo Levi, and a simple bricklayer who made sure that he survived - with such protagonists, an author has a strong subject on his hands. That can't go wrong, you would think. Norse bricklayer He had just graduated as a chemist when Primo Levi, twenty-four and Jewish, was rounded up and deported...
After her acclaimed and award-winning debut novel The sky is always purple, Sholeh Rezazadeh impresses again with her second book. I Know a Mountain Waiting for Me is a tender, delicately sensitive and sumptuous novel. Stunningly sensitive It is hard to believe that Iranian-born writer and poet Sholeh Rezazadeh (1989) has only lived in the Netherlands since 2015. Her command of language and manner of...
The old domain of VPRO, established in decades of Meticulous and Desperate Simplism, Tegenlicht and Zomer- dan Wintergasten, languished for quite a while. Viewer terror fragmented the safely elitist offerings. BNNVARA searched for a tone and didn't find it. Cultural omnivores like yours truly could no longer turn on the TV to 2 with impunity and then, after an evening of content, turn it against...
"The vote for Wilders may be a dissenting vote, but apparently explicit racism is not a dealbreaker for all those people. That's terrible for someone of colour." In the stately Trippenhuis, seat of the Academy of Arts, this high word from Karin Amatmoekrim sounded extra emphatic. She was responding from the stage to a late-arriving audience member, who felt that "we...
In his award-winning novel Niki, Greek writer Christos Chomenidis tells the turbulent story of his mother and her family. But above all, he tells the reader about 30 years of troubled Greek history.Family chronicle With the captivating family chronicle Niki, awarded the Prix du Livre Européen two years ago, Greek writer Christos Chomenidis (1966) tells two histories: that of his mother Niki and...
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