This week, we bring you news from Sweden and Central Europe! In Sweden, Eva Wissting reports on the annual Stockholm literature fair and recent acclaim for writer Merete Mazzarella, while Julia Sherwood highlights lively readings across Central Europe from the 2021 European Literature Days and Visegrad Café program. Read on to find out more!
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
The annual literary fair, Stockholms Litteraturmässa, was held last weekend, for the fourth time, after having been cancelled two years in a row due to renovations two years ago and last year because of COVID restrictions. The fair, which is a single day event with no entrance fee, is meant to highlight the diversity of Swedish publishers. This year, it included an exhibit of around fifty publishers and magazines. There were also author talks and lectures on subjects ranging from democracy, climate, translation ethics, to literature about real events, as well as storytime events for the younger visitors and poetry readings. The theme of “the printed book” was meant to reflect current affairs in the publishing industry and was chosen because it can no longer be taken for granted that literature is read in its conventional printed book form.
Last week, the Swedish Academy announced that it is awarding Merete Mazzarella the 2021 Finlandspris (Finland Prize), which amounts to just over ten thousand US dollars, for her work in the Swedish-speaking cultural life of Finland. Swedish is the first language of about five percent of the Finnish population and one of the two official languages in the country. Mazzarella, who was born in 1945 in Helsinki, is a literary scholar and a writer who has published over thirty books since her debut in 1979. Her most recent book, Från höst till höst (From autumn to autumn), is an essayistic journal about living as an elderly person through the pandemic and its restrictions. Her books have been translated to Finnish, Danish, and German. Previous recipients of the award include author and journalist Kjell Westö (The Wednesday Club).
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central Europe
“Travel Routes. On the Road to Be Free?” was the headline of the 2021 European Literature Days, held in the Austrian town of Krems on the banks of the Danube, one of the continent’s longest travel routes. Writers from ten European countries engaged in lively and stimulating dialogue about roads, borders, languages, and crossroads that feature in their works, as well as the effect of the pandemic on our ability to travel and their writing over the past two years. (Read the foreword by the festival’s artistic director, Walter Frond, and the opening keynote speech by the Iraqi-German writer Najem Wali).
While the 2020 edition of the festival was held virtually, this year the organizers made a conscious decision to hold the event in person since streaming can’t compare to the atmosphere of real-life encounters. With Austria going into lockdown the following Monday, it was a close call, but most of the authors and moderators made it to Krems, and the German writer Navid Kermani, winner of this year’s Honorary Prize of the Austrian Book Trade, was able to receive his award in person. The video recordings are now available on Literature House Europe’s YouTube channel (most of the discussions were in English; for those in German, there is an option to generate subtitles).
One of those who could participate only virtually was the “rock star” historian Peter Frankopan, who talked to moderator Rosie Goldsmith via Zoom about the inspiration for his two books on the Silk Roads, his prodigious language skills, factors that have shaped his worldview, and his latest book. In another discussion moderated by Goldsmith, Kapka Kassabova and Erika Fatland shared their geographical dreams and nightmares. Both were insistent that being solo female travellers was an advantage, as it allowed them to explore issues that would be inaccessible were they men. The astonishing fact that between the borders of her native Norway and Korea there is just one, huge country, led Fatland to undertake an epic journey that resulted in The Border. A Journey Around Russia. For the Bulgarian-born Kassabova, writing To the Lake, her book about Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa on the border of three countries, allowed her to delve into her own family’s history and pain. Italian writer Andrea Marcolongo (The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek) talked about her fascination with learning Ancient Greek, which she considers a “language of silence,” since nobody is sure how to pronounce it.
A conversation between Austrian critic Katja Gasser and her compatriot Christoph Ransmayr was followed by a reading from Atlas of an Anxious Man, a collection of stories from the Mekong and Danube Rivers, through Java’s volcanoes, to the island of Rapa Nui. While several of Ransmayr’s books are available in English from Seagull Books, the writing of the acclaimed and multiple award-winning German author Felicitas Hoppe has yet to be translated into English. German speakers can, however, enjoy Beat Mazenauer’s three-minute animated video book review of Hoppe’s Prawda. Eine amerikanische Reise (Pravda. An American Journey), a lively account of her trip across the US following in the footsteps of a similar journey undertaken eighty years earlier by Soviet satirists Ilf and Petrov.
During the happier months when Covid restrictions were relaxed or lifted, organizers of another Central European literary project managed to pull off an ambitious programme of twelve events between June and November. Showcasing writers from the four “Visegrad countries” (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), Visegrad Café was conceived by literary organizers Éva Karádi and Szilvia Szarka with Wilhelm Droste of the Budapest-based Három Holló/Drei Raben (Three Crows) Foundation to celebrate the coffeehouse culture of Central Europe through readings and discussions. Held in literary cafés in Bratislava, Brno, Budapest, Kraków, Prague, and Štúrovo on the Danube, on the Slovak and Hungarian border, and organized in conjunction with local literary festivals and institutions, the discussions aimed to raise the awareness among the locals of the literatures of the other countries. Each event featured four leading writers discussing their own and each other’s work. The participating writers included Sylvie Richterová, Irena Dousková, and Vojtěch Němec, as well as past Asymptote contributors Radka Denemarková and Dora Kaprálová from the Czech Republic. Poland was represented by Lidia Amejko, Maciej Topolski, Magdalena Grzebałkowska, and past contributor Marcin Wicha. Slovakia was represented by Karol Chmel, Katarína Kucbelová, Silvester Lavrík, Pavol Rankov, Veronika Šikulová, and past Asymptote contributor Jana Beňová; and Hungary by Pál Závada, Viktor Horváth, László Garaczi, Ildikó Noémi Nagy, Judit Szaniszló, Gábor Németh, Virág Erdős, and Edina Szvoren.
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