Het andere schrijversfestival: vier dagen in januari in het teken van schrijvers uit de meest onverwachte hoeken van de wereld. Wij maken de Winternachten mee.
We spoke briefly at Writers Unlimited 2013 with the woman who has been giving workshops in poetry to schoolchildren for a few years now. And we wondered again if rap wasn't enough for them, those kids. No. So it turns out. And she explains it clearly.
John de Mol is doing good business in the Arab world. He acts rather dismissively about this, according to Hassnae Bouazza. According to her, the television producer talks publicly mostly about the many restrictions on his formats because of Islam and the sentimentalism of TV in the Middle East in general. That De Mol's success number The Voice of Arabia during the final in
With a jam-packed programme like Writers Unlimited 2013, it sometimes happens that, even as a professional journalist, despite everything, you end up dropping in somewhere too late, and then just catching a glimpse of something really great. In this case, after the tour de force of Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis, was that Kenyan Ngwatilo Mawiyoo's spoken word performance. Mea culpa for that.
How many male genitalia Yasmine Allas had weighed in her hand. For a while, that was the question during Writers Unlimited's most shameless programme to date. This latenight talk show addressed the question of how shameless writers actually dare to be these days. Kristien Hemmerechts, always good for a few firm statements, met her peers in
And then, just like that, you can miss the highlight of the first Winternacht because you don't pull it together with a presenter. Flemish author Bart van Loo, according to many a twitterer, seems to have uttered beautiful sentences in the programme 'Daar geef ik mijn leven voor', but that was well after midnight and I was already
During the kick-off of Winternacht 1, publicist Bas Heijne brought the two literary giants Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis closer together. What remains of their former idealism? Oz's barrage of wonderful one-liners proved difficult to tame and made for a hilarious but somewhat unbalanced conversation.
Lebanese writer Hanaan Al-Shaykh (Beirut, Lebanon, 1945) opened Wrtiters Unlimited on Thursday 17 January with a blazing argument against Arab culture of shame. This, according to the writer whose books The story of Zahra, Women between sky and sand, Beirut blues and Only in London have been translated into Dutch, so deep in
It is incredible what an energy the men of Manar can generate. These six - dressed in djellabas - percussionists play Dekka al Marrakchia: an insanely rousing form of traditional Moroccan drum 'n bass party music and religious Gnawa. After a solemn, almost ritualistic beginning - in which the band comes jogging onto the stage of the Theater aan het Spui in a goose-step, accompanied by the menacing sounds of two huge horns - the drums erupt and the dance floor is full of swinging visitors.
Er is iets bijzonders aan de hand met Afrika. De nieuwe generatie schrijvers uit Nigeria, Ghana en Zuid Afrika die rondloopt op Writers Unlimited staat anders in de wereld dan hun ouders. Of, sterker nog, het feit dat ze daar op een heel andere manier mee omgaan, met die voorouders, definieert hen als iets volkomen nieuws. Ze presenteren zich zelfbewuste, moderne wereldburgers.
In the late 1980s, John N. Gray (South Shields, 1948) adviser to Margaret Thatcher - Gray: "I was just a small mote of dust in her administration" - now he is a fierce critic of all things neoconservative. On Writers Unlimited, publicist Bas Heijne felt him out.
His voice is low, and when he talks, he does so calmly and thoughtfully. He regards his humour - very British - as a side effect that is more accidental than intended. This makes Helon Habila a perfect guest for the opening night of Writers Unlimited, The Hague's literature festival better known as 'Winternachten'. The Nigerian can tell stories, but...
Ze woont inmiddels in Noorwegen, nadat ze haar vaderland Iran moest verlaten wegens eigen mening. Ze zat vijf dagen vast, en in de beruchte Evin-gevangenis in Teheran is dat een eeuwigheid. Nu is Asieh Amini vrij in een vreemd land, en krijgt ze van Oxfam-Novib de PEN-Award uitgereikt. Een mooie opening voor het Writers Unlimited Winternachtenfestival, dat met deze uitreiking…
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