Prominent writers from Turkey, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain, the US and Romania participated in the 8th Bucharest International Literature Festival.
Prominent writers from Turkey, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain , the US and Romania participated, between December the 2nd and 4th in the 8th Bucharest International Literature Festival. The first evening of the festival offered a literary encounter between two foreign prose writers born in Romania: György Dragomán of Hungary, one of the most awarded East European writers of the time and Swiss prose writer Dana Grigorcea, one of the highly acclaimed writers of German expression.
György Dragomán was born in the central Romanian city of Targu Mures and settled in Hungary, back in 1988. The first novel bearing his signature and translated into Romanian is "The White King", brought out by the Polirom Publishers in 2008. This novel won the "Tibor Déry" and "Sándor Márai" Prizes in Hungary and has been translated into over 30 languages. British filmmakers are currently carrying out a project to make a movie based on this novel in the UK. In 2011, György Dragomán won the "Jan Michalski" Literary Prize for the same novel. In 2014, Dragoman published his third novel "The Bone Fire" (Máglya" in Hungarian), which enjoyed great success in Hungary and is currently being translated in the US, the Netherlands and Germany, as a confirmation of the author's special vision and style which have already won over the public at large. Ildikó Gábos-Foarţă translated both György Dragomán's books into Romanian. "I keep thinking that ideas are actually memories. Ideas and memories come from the same place and this is how the past is being built. Actually, this book is an exercise in my attempt to built my personal past and identity", says György Dragoman, referring to his latest novel, "The Bone Fire":
György Dragoman: "I've asked myself all sorts of questions and I believe that in the end, the book is the only answer I was able to formulate. I knew I would write about memory. When I start writing a book, I start from a concrete image, which lingers in my mind and it is only afterwards that I use axioms. This time, I've used the following axiom: how can you remember something if you try not to. Can you remember something if there are no memories?"
"I didn't intend to write books based on historical issues, but books on possible liberties, in a society where freedom shouldn't exist. The first 15 years of my life that I spent in Targu Mures are extremely important to me", says György Dragoman, who will further dwell on his working method.
G. Dragoman: "This is just like a building. I have a fragment, some images and afterwards every image becomes the nucleus of a short script. By juxtaposing these images, I manage to make a building. And I feel just like an architect who makes a building, living inside it. It is only after I have written a third of my book that I understand how the structure takes shape. And I always make public fragments of the books I am writing. I choose fragments that can also function as short prose and I publish them. To me, there is a close relation between short prose and novels, and I can't possibly make a clear-cut difference between the two. A novel can always be developed starting from short prose. And I also believe that short prose should include just as many questions and direction lines as a novel."
The prose writer of Romanian descent, Dana Grigorcea, is one of the budding and highly acclaimed names of the world literary scene. Her latest novel, "Das primäre Gefühl der Schuldlosigkeit", ("The Original Feeling of Innocence") entered the race for Best Book of the Year in Switzerland, and it won the 3-Sat Prize of the "Ingeborg Bachmann" literary contest. .
This seems to be only the beginning of the novel's way to success, given the appraisals made by the best-known German language publications. "A captivating portrait of Romania that culminates with the revolt of the Romanian people in its aspiration for freedom and change" writes Die Zeit. Dana Grigorcea has gone on a tour to promote her novel "Sentimentul primar al nevinovatiei" - "The original feeling of innocence" and she will next share with us the reaction of the public in the German space.
TRACK: "In Germany, the audience reacts to reading. People laugh, there are people who hold their breath, and others get scared, become anxious or are eager to ask questions. In Romania the audience is quieter. While I was reading, I kept raising my head to see if there is still anyone in the room because everybody was so quiet. I have read in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, I have had literary evenings in France too, and in all these places people are very involved, they manifest their presence, want to participate. In Bucharest people are just curious to see what's going on".
According to Die Presse, the prose of "Dana Grigorcea seems to be painted by thick, courageous, attractive, opulent and humorous lines". Here is Dana Grigorcea:
"The way in which I perceive my new novel depends very much on the audience. The audience in Germany reacts differently from that in Switzerland. There is one passage that I read quite frequently, in which I tell how I became a pioneer, and I can say that each reading was met with a different reaction. In the former Democratic Republic of Germany, people react differently from those in Dusseldorf or Hamburg or Switzerland. There are certain jokes I make in the novel at which people laugh more in Switzerland than in Austria. There are certain subtleties which the audiences in Austria perceive quicker than in Switzerland. Therefore, through my book, I manage to get to know my public and get through to different mentalities, depending on the place."
The new novel of the Romanian-born writer Dana Grigorcea speaks about the political change in Romania seen from the perspective of her childhood memories and from that of her return to Bucharest, ART-TV notes.
Useful Links
Copyright © . All rights reserved