September 27th 2024, Skopje – “BookStar” Festival has announced the complete program for its tenth edition and it includes a number of attractive events and impressive names from different European countries Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Iceland) Alessandro Baricco (Italy), Kristian Novak (Croatia), Zdravka Evtimova (Bulgaria), José Luís Peixoto (Portugal), Igor Marojević (Serbia), Paola Peretti (Italy), Faruk Šehić (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Miřenka Čechová (Czech Republic). The author in focus from Macedonia is Rumena Bužarovska who will declare the festival open, and forty Macedonian writers, university professors, critics, musicians and other representatives from the publishing and cultural sectors are participating in the program.
Encouraged by the jubilee, this year for the first time the special award "BOOKSTAR" X10 is awarded for exceptional achievements in literature to Alessandro Baricco, who is without a doubt the most famous Italian writer, one of Europe's favorite authors, an intellectual who has become a global sensation and a man whose name sounds like a rock star! The Italian novelist, screenwriter, literary and music critic, journalist, pianist, director and essayist was born in Turin in 1958. He won the "Viareggio" award in 1993, as well as numerous other awards. He wrote fourteen novels, three essays and a number of screenplays. Almost all of his works have been translated into the Macedonian language and this includes a number of works with cult status - "Silk", "Castles of Anger", "Novecento", "Ocean Sea", "Mr. Gwynn", "This Story", of which some of them are screened and staged on theater stages. His work on television, in theater and on film is very significant and extensive. The BOOKSTAR Award" X10 is given to him for his overall creativity.
- We are talking about an author who conquers a new writing territory with each book, and since the end of the 1990s, interest in him has not subsided. Baricco has remained a voice that, even when he writes differently from his original novels, is again fresh and innovative. He is an eternal metamorphosis of imagination and its inexhaustible possibilities. Considering that his trips abroad have been reduced to a minimum for four or five years, the "BookStar" Festival this year has the honor of realizing an exclusive online participation of one of the greatest authors of today, an occasion for which we will soon publish the translation from his latest book, "Avel" - say from “Antolog”.
This year’s second laureate is Jón Kalman Stefánson, who is awarded the traditional "BookStar" 2024 award for the trilogy "Between Heaven and Hell". Stefánson (1963) is the most important contemporary Icelandic writer and a widely talked about European author, known for his original ability to combine poetry and prose, creating works that are deeply lyrical and emotional. So far, he has published thirteen prose works, five poetry collections and five translations into Icelandic, including one work by Charles Bukowski. In 2017, his novel “Fish Have No Feet” was nominated for the Booker International Prize, and he has been nominated four times for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. His works have been translated into ten languages. Three of his novels have been translated into the Macedonian language: "Heaven and Hell", "The Sorrow of Angels" and "The Heart of Man" and he has received several awards for them. Stefánson comes to Skopje after a number of events in different parts of the world, including the big International Book Festival in Budapest, where he is the main guest of honor these days.
Festival program
The European Literature festival "BookStar" will mark the beginning of its tenth, jubilee edition, on Monday, September 30th, and will last until October 3rd. The events will take place in "Laboratorium", as well as in other locations: the Faculty of Philology "Blaže Koneski", the City Library "Brakja Miladinovci" and Europe House - Skopje. The program of the festival includes about twenty events: talks with authors, book promotions, meetings with students, panel discussions, literary readings, creative workshops, podcasts, music concerts, an exhibition, a stand-up show, the awarding of the "Dragi" awards, as well as the second Publishing Europe fellowship convention. Admission to all literary events is free. The festival slogan, which every year creatively provokes engagement and reflection, is "Metamorphosis" or "Transformation" and is inspired by the works of Franz Kafka. A special event "Reading and Translating Kafka" will be held in his honor.
- Transformations are one of the most seminal ways in which human existence is designed. Transformations are where logic steps off the path for the fantasy and no one complains about it. In the year that marks the centenary of Kafka's death and in which the festival celebrates its first anniversary with a zero at the end, we find inspiration in works that are powerful enough to turn the impossible into the possible. The works that transcend the environments from which they originate. These are works that are bigger than the moment and for which the literary world is sometimes too narrow. And these works are written by authors who live literature. And they are now coming to Skopje to experience THE METAMORPHOSIS! - say the organizers.
In addition to the writers, top representatives of the publishing sector from Europe will be part of the festival: Nadège Agullo (France) – executive director of the publishing house "Agullo" from Bordeaux; Tino Schlench (Austria/Germany) – curator for the literary program of "Cultural Summer" – Vienna; Giorgia Spadoni (Italy) - translator and external collaborator for the publishing house "Botega Erante" - Udine; Manol Peykov Manol Peykov (Bulgaria) - owner of the publishing house "Janet 45" - Plovdiv and the Sofia Literary Agency - Sofia, as well as the translator and university professor in Berlin, Benjamin Langerwho is also the winner of the "Dragi" international prize for the translation of the novel " Pirej" by Petre M. Andreevski from Macedonian to German.
Within the festival, the winner of the "Dragi" award for the best translation into the Macedonian language will be announced. The five finalists for 2024 are Anastasija Gjurčinova for the translation from Italian of “The Intimate Life“ by Niccolò Ammaniti; Gjoko Zdraveski for the translation from Croatian of “Three for Kartal” by Miljenko Jergović; Ekaterina Babamova for the translation from English of “Victory City” by Salman Rushdie; Elisaveta Popovska for the translation from French of “A Girl’s Story” by Annie Ernaux and Irena Jurčeva for the translation from English of “The Silmarillion” by J. R. R. Tolkien..
As in the former years, this year as well, “BookStar” will upgrade its cooperation with all stakeholders to raise awareness about waste selection, as well as active participation of the audience in the selection process, and will also continue its mission as first literary festival that offered translation of some of the events in sign language. Among other things, books in Braille will be produced and donated this year, in order to support the transformation of our society into an inclusive one by personal example.
So far, the biggest European writers have participated in “Bookstar”: Slavenka Drakulić, Najat el Hachimi, Stefan Hertmans, Igor Štiks, Sjón, Miljenko Jergović, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Jela Krečič Žižek, Michal Viewegh, Slobodan Šnajder, Niccolo Amaniti, Svetlana Aleksievich, Saša Stanišić, Eugene Vodolazkin, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Jussi Adler Olsen, Hakan Nesser and many other authors from almost all European countries, as well as several dozen Macedonian writers.
Short biographies of the foreign guests
Kristian Novak (1979) is a Croatian writer, linguist and university professor. He is a member of the Society of Writers in Croatia and the Croatian Society for Applied Linguistics. He has published four novels so far. He is considered as the most important writer from the region.
Zdravka Evtimova (1959) is a Bulgarian author and literary translator from English, German and French. So far, she has published six novels and eight collections of short stories. Her works have been translated into a dozen languages, while her short stories have been published in 32 countries in the world, making her a rare example of Balkan literature. In 2021, she was named the favorite author by the viewers of the Bulgarian National Television.
Faruk Šehić (1970) is a Bosnian-Herzegovinian writer and journalist who spends his free time fishing. He is the winner of the 2013 European Union Literature Prize for the novel "Quiet Flows the Una". Literary criticism praises him as the voice of the downtrodden generation of authors born in the 1970s. His works have been translated into sixteen languages and published in twenty countries.
Miřenka Čechová (1982) is a representative of the contemporary experimental ballet and physical theater in the Czech Republic, a director and performance artist, a choreographer, a university professor and a writer, whose novel "Ballerinas" caused a storm of reactions in her home country.
Igor Marojević (1968) is a contemporary Serbian writer and translator, a member of the Serbian and Catalan PEN Center and one of the founders of the Serbian Literary Society. He is the author of nine novels, two novellas and four collections of short stories. The novel "Remnants of the World" is the most awarded book of the 21st century in Serbian literature.
Paola Peretti (1986) is an Italian writer and teacher of the Italian language. Inspired by her life and diagnosis with Stargardt disease, in her first novel "The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree" she tells the story of a girl who was diagnosed with this rare genetic disease that causes gradual loss of vision with the final effect of complete blindness.
José Luís Peixoto (1974) is a Portuguese novelist, poet and playwright. So far, he has published thirteen prose books, four poetry collections, two travelogues and two children's books. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is considered one of the most talented contemporary Portuguese authors. He is the winner of many national and international awards, including the "José Saramago" award, in whose history he is recorded as the youngest winner.
Rumena Bužarovska (1981) is currently the most current Macedonian writer, professor, translator and activist for women's rights. He lives and works in Skopje, where he deals with literary translation from English to Macedonian (John M. Coetzee, Lewis Carroll, Truman Capote, Ian Reed, Flannery O'Connor) and she teaches American literature and translation at the Faculty of Philology "Blaže Koneski". She will soon publish his first novel.
In the period from September 30th to October 3rd, everyone has the right to experience the metamorphosis through meetings with the authors of "BookStar"!
The festival is held under the slogan "The Metamorphosis" and is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of North Macedonia, the literary network Traduki, EU with YOU, the Embassy of the Czech Republic and Republic of Italy, the Cultural and Information Center of the Republic of Bulgaria in Skopje, the Italian Institute of Culture in Belgrade, the Icelandic Literary Center and the "Camões" Language and Cooperation Institute. The media sponsor is the Macedonian Radio Television. The visual identity is the authorship of Maja Plačkoska, who also produced the festival video.
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