(Romania, 1973) grew up in Transylvania during Ceausescu's totalitarian regime. At age 15, he moved to Hungary. His novel The White King (2008) has been translated into 30 languages and won acclaim from the international literary press as well as various literary prizes. The book deals with a boy growing up under the totalitarian regime that has taken away his father. His rebellious youth is dominated by constant oppression and his father's permanent absence. During the festival, his novel Vuurstapel (Fire Stack) will come out in Dutch. This time, the protagonist is a 13-year-old girl living through the confusing years after the bloody revolution that executed the dictator. In Hungary and beyond, Dragomán is considered a kindred spirit to David Mitchell, George Orwell and Stanley Kubrick. He has translated the work of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Ian McEwan. Dragomán lives in Budapest with his wife, the poet Anna Szabo, and their two sons.

(The Netherlands, 1960) is a literary critic, writer, curator, interviewer, debate leader and "ambassador between France and the Netherlands in the field of literature", as a French ambassador once said. She has been writing about literature for some 30 years, mainly for the NRC daily. She published books on French and European literature, on Hella S. Haasse and Cees Nooteboom. Her In de voetsporen van mijn grootvader (2021) is an autobiographical search for her literary genes. Before that, she published Met Parijse pen. Literaire omzwervingen (in collaboration with photographer Bart Koetsier, 2020), which takes readers to Paris for walks in the footsteps of famous Dutch and French writers. She was joint artistic curator of the Netherlands' Guest of Honour role at the 2024 Leipzig Book Fair with German journalist Bettina Baltschev.

Go to the website of Margot Dijkgraaf
Instagram: @margotdijkgraaf