Book of My Life: Lisa Weeda in conversation with Charlotte Remarque

About Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by Rebecca F. Kuang.

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Information

Date and time Saturday 25 January 2025 22:30 tot 22:50 uur
Location Filmhuis - Studio A
Price All up to 30 years 15,-
Regular 35,-
Ooievaarspas 15,-
DenHaagPas 32,50.

Writers told us about their favourite book: the book that inspires or touches them, that set their artistic, moral or intellectual compass. In short, the book they would recommend to everyone. Interview: Charlotte Remarque.

Lisa Weeda chose as her favorite Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, a 2022 novel of speculative fiction by fanatasy novelist Rebecca F. Kuang, who was born in China and raised in the USA. Thematically similar to The Poppy War, Kuang's first book series, the book criticizes British imperialism, capitalism, and the complicity of academia in perpetuating and enabling them. Babel is set in an alternative-reality 1830s England in which Britain's global economic and colonial supremacy are fueled by the use of magical silver bars. Their power comes from capturing what is "lost in translation" between words in different languages that have similar, but not identical, meanings.

Line-up

Charlotte Remarque

(The Netherlands, 1998) is a reviewer, essayist and podcast maker. Her work has appeared in weekly news magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, national Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant, and the Nederlandse Boekengids, among others. In the podcast Boeken FM, Charlotte, poet and reviewer Ellen Deckwitz and writer and reviewer Joost de Vries tell you which book you should read. They take turns contributing a book - topical, relevant or just fantastic. Boeken FM is a podcast by book publisher Das Mag in collaboration with De Groene Amsterdammer and podcast ad network Dag en Nacht Media.
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Lisa Weeda

(Rotterdam, 1989) is a Dutch-Ukrainian writer, literary programme maker, theatre maker and VR director. Her debut novel Aleksandra was published in 2021. Her grandmother is the central character in the story. She sends the main character Lisa to the Donbas to bring a cloth to the grave of her murdered uncle Kolya. In 2024, Dans Dans Revolutie (Dance Dance Revolution) was published, a novel in which Weeda tackles the issue of looking away from and looking at war in four storylines. The immersive theatre installation of the same name, Dans Dans Revolutie, won the Designers' Prize at the Dutch Theatre Festival in 2025. In Het archief Jilles - brief aan mijn grootvader (The Jilles Archive - Letter to My Grandfather, 2025), she describes how an archive discovery brings a loved one closer. Together with Teddy Tops, she compiled J'accuse (2025), a collection of texts by forty Dutch, Flemish and international writers who speak out against the erasure of the Palestinians. Lisa's work has been translated in eight countries.

Go to the website of Lisa Weeda here
Instagram: @lisa_weeda
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