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ANNOUNCEMENT
MOROCCAN-SPANISH WRITER NAJAT EL HACHMI – WINNER OF THE BOOKSTAR AWARD 2023 Najat El Hachmi – ДОБИТНИЧКА НА НАГРАДАТА „BOOKSTAR“ 2023
27 September, 2023, Skopje The "BookStar" festival has announced the winner of the "BookStar" award for 2023, it is Najat El Hachmi who is particularly pleased to arrive in Skopje at the opening of the festival, when she will be presented with this significant award for the book " On Monday they will love us", which, like her other works, is a feminist reading both in Spain and in the rest of Europe. The novel was published simultaneously in Catalan and Spanish in 2021 and exactly two years later it also appeared in Macedonian translated by Lara Prokopieva"On Monday they will love us" won the Nadal Prize in 2021, Spain's oldest literary award for the best unpublished novel in the Spanish language, and in October 2023 it deservedly won the BookStar Award for the most significant novel published in Macedonia between two festival editions.
- Najat El Hachmi created a manuscript that without compromises and without self-censorship talks about traumas, about the personal identity odyssey, about the tragedy of homelessness, uprootedness, transitivity and disorientation. This feeling is associated with migrants, that is, those who have left one culture to settle in another. That domestication usually denotes only a spatial term, since migrants continue to practice the traditions of their home community, almost as if they had never left. But among them there are always people who yearn to completely leave their origins and accept to become marked, consciously or not. If they can at all break away from the constraints of the culture that pulls them back, the question is whether they can even be accepted beyond stereotypes, beyond expectations and prejudices, into the culture they aspire to? That's what makes this novel so meaningful and so close to us here who grew up with the motto "The East wrote us off, the West doesn't write us off," says the BookStar award rationale.
"On Monday they will love us" can be called a feminist novel, it can be called a novel about illuminating the position of women in conservative environments, a novel about the search for freedom, a novel about the power of writing, about the (mis)understanding of others, about the search for love, empathy, acceptance, belonging, but it is above all – a model novel of our time. With it, El Hachmi inscribes his name in the history of Spanish, Moroccan, but also in the history of European and world literature as a name we will hear about again. It is due above all to her approach through which the rights of different, rejected, humiliated, silenced and invisible women are treated. That approach is authentic, because it is personal and because it is wanted in direct conflict with generalizing worldviews that want to see the world in black and white. Her disturbing novel is a violation of that paradigm, and from it all the colors of the spectrum spill out.
Najat El Hachmi is a Moroccan-Spanish writer who writes on feminist topics. She was born in Nador (Morocco) in 1979. At the age of eight, she emigrated with her family to Catalonia. She studied Arabic literature at the University of Barcelona. She started writing when she was twelve years old, at first for fun, and later as a way to express her own thoughts, but also to shed a different light on her own reality composed of (at least) two cultures to which she belongs.
Among her published works, one should mention her novels “L’últim patriarca” (2008), a debut that won one of the most prestigious awards in Catalonia, the Ramon Llull Prize and the Prix Ulysse, “La filla estrangera” (2015 – winner of the Sant Joan Novel Award and the Barcelona City Award). All her works have been translated into many languages. After the celebrated feminist essay "They always talked about us" (2019), he publishes the novel "They will love us on Monday" (2021).. Her award-winning works cover the themes of identity, migration and the meaning of being a woman in a border environment. She also works as a journalist and columnist for, among others, the Spanish newspapers El Pais and El Periodico.
Other announced guests
With this, the Festival announced all ten participants from the main program of "BookStar", all but one of whom will attend in person in Skopje:
Miljenko Jergović (1966) is a Bosnian-Croatian writer and journalist. He is one of the most significant figures on the regional public scene. His short stories and novels have been translated into thirty languages. Jerović is the winner of numerous literary awards, domestic and foreign, and is one of the most widely read authors. BookStar will present his latest novels - "Volga, Volga" and "Windfoot Babukić and his time".
Lidija Dimkovska (1971) is a poet, novelist, essayist and translator. She studied comparative literature at the University of Skopje and received her doctorate in Romanian literature at the University of Bucharest. Since 2001, he has been living in Ljubljana, where he works as a writer and translator from Romanian and Slovenian into the Macedonian language. Dimkovska is one of the most awarded authors of our spaces. He has written six poetry collections and three prose works, of which the novel "Reserve Life" experienced the greatest fame. She is current with her latest novel "Unique Social Security Number".
Branko Rosić (1964) is a Serbian writer and mechanical engineer. He played in the cult punk band "Urban Guerrilla" and later in the electro group "Berliner Strasse". He conducted interviews with important figures from the Yugoslav and world rock'n'roll and cultural scene, including Stephen Patrick Morrissey (The Smiths), Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Yoko Ono, Hanif Kureishi, Irvine Welsh, Yu Nesbe and Jean-Paul Gaultier. The British Queen Elizabeth II honored him with the Medal of the British Empire.
Drago Glamuzina (1967) is a Croatian writer and editor. He graduated in comparative literature and philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. Since 2011, editor in the "VBZ" publishing house from Zagreb. He is also the program director of the literary festival "Scream" in Rijeka. He writes poetry and prose.
Lucie Faulerová (1989) is a Czech writer, editor and screenwriter. She graduated in Czech studies. Her debut novel "Dust Collectors" aroused massive interest among readers and critics immediately after its publication. With prominent Czech conceptual artist Katerzyna Šeda, Lucie co-authored the book BRNOX — A Guide to the Bronx of Brno (2016) for which she won the 2016 Magnesia Litera Journalism Award. In 2021, he won the European Union Prize for Literature for the novel "The Death Girl".
Stefan Hertmans (1951) is among the brightest Belgian literary stars – author, poet and essayist from the Flemish speaking area. His biography reads like a novel: from a teacher to a jazz musician, from a university career to a writer, from a Belgian state laureate to a huge international celebrity. In 2016, Hertmans received the prestigious E. di Peron for the historical novel "Forever Stranger".
Anja Mugerli (1984) is a Slovenian author, proofreader and editor. She graduated with a degree in Slovenian language and a master's degree in performance studies and creative writing. In 2021, the collection of short stories "Bee Family" is shortlisted for the "New Place" award and receives the European Union Prize for Literature. He also writes plays, two of which won prizes at an international competition in Italy. He lives in Nova Gorica, on the border between Slovenia and Italy.
Francis Kirps (1971) is a Luxembourgish author, satirist and journalist. In the early 2000s, Kypris entered the poetry slam scene. He has participated in over five hundred slam and reading stage performances. Founder and Vice President of the new Luxembourg Writers Association A:LL Schreftsteller*innen. In 2020, he received the Servais Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature for the book "Mutations".
Sophie Hannah (1971) is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author, published in fifty-one languages and her books have sold millions of copies worldwide. It's Tuesday for a new series of Hercule Poirot sequels, commissioned by Agatha Christie's family, bringing the total to four so far, with the fifth due out in October 2023. Her poetry is included in academic programs in the UK. With her help, a master's program in writing crime novels was launched at the University of Cambridge, where she is the main lecturer and subject leader. In addition, he is the founder of the DREAM AUTHOR writer training programwww.dreamauthorcoaching.com).
In the period from October 2-4, everyone has the opportunity to meet the authors during BookStar 2023.
The festival is held under the slogan "Please do disturb" and is supported by the Ministry of Culture, the literary network Traduki, EU with YOU, the publishing house "Antolog", and individual events by the Czech Literary Center, the Center for Flemish Literature , the European Union, the Cultural and Information Center of the Republic of Bulgaria in Skopje and the Embassies of the Czech Republic and Belgium. The festival program will take place in several locations in Skopje. Media sponsor of the event is the Macedonian Radio Television. The visual identity is the authorship of Vladimir Trajanovski,, Тhe festival video was created by Radmila Vankoska.
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