Mircea Cărtărescu
(Bucharest, 1956) is considered the greatest contemporary Romanian writer. His novel The Knowers is part one of the semi-autobiographical Orbitor trilogy that has been wholly translated into Dutch. In it, the writer transports us to the bygone world of his mother's ancestors - Romanianized Bulgarians, full of "ancient, pre-Christian terror." Part two, The Trophy, is set during the bombings of World War II and the Russian invasion. Part three, The Vast Mausoleum, describes the great changes that took place during the revolution in Romania. Cărtărescu's books form a chain of stories that link up by association, told in rich language. Reality alternates with magic. With its stormy streams of thought and crazy ideas, this saga elicits comparisons with James Joyce's Ulysses and Gabriel García Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Past events
Ideology as an Act of Fiction
Writers are more likely to take up the pen than the sword in order to fight injustice. Fiction becomes their ideological act.
My Secret City
The festival asked seven authors to write about their own "secret" cities. Not the city that they see when they walk out the door but the city that they occasionally and unexpectedly come across. They read in their own language, with English and Dutch translations projected simultaneously.
Winternachten lecture: Fiction in Fake Times
What is real, what is fake? And yet it's the fabrications that can provide insight into the world in which we live. Michel Faber kicks off the evening with the Winternachten Lecture.
