Uploaded September 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Deutschsprachiger Stream: youtube.com/live/EgA91rboO-c?feature=share
Welcome address: Lavinia Frey
Greetings: Claudia Roth (Minister of State for Culture and the Media) and Joe Chialo (State Minister for Culture and Social Cohesion).
Francesca Melandri opens the 23rd ilb with her speech »The Ultrasound of Silence«. Melandri’s work is characterized by an examination of memory culture and forgotten history.
»Missing dates from monuments. Absent words in national Constitutions. News which do not appear on the front pages. Omissions, ellipses, erasures, polite avoidances: the most powerful expression of history and politics – and possibly of human relationships in general – is more often than not in what is left unsaid« [Francesca Melandri]. [Francesca Melandri] Afterwards, Francesca Melandri, Navid Kermani, and Manjeet Mann discuss silence, non-speaking, and the freedom of speech in our culture today in a conversation moderated by Vivian Perkovic.
With the kind support of the Instituto Italiano di Cultura di Berlino.
Musical performance by musicians of the Trickster Orchestra under the direction of Cymin Samawatie.
To kick off the festival, the Berlin winner of the German Book Trade Reading Competition, Celia Spickhoff, will read from Erich Käster’s »Pünktchen und Anton« as part of the SPECIAL »1933–2023«.
The event is in German and English.
Deutschsprachiger Stream: youtube.com/live/EgA91rboO-c?feature=share
Welcome address: Lavinia Frey
Greetings: Claudia Roth (Minister of State for Culture and the Media) and Joe Chialo (State Minister for Culture and Social Cohesion).
Francesca Melandri opens the 23rd ilb with her speech »The Ultrasound of Silence«. Melandri’s work is characterized by an examination of memory culture and forgotten history.
»Missing dates from monuments. Absent words in national Constitutions. News which do not appear on the front pages. Omissions, ellipses, erasures, polite avoidances: the most powerful expression of history and politics – and possibly of human relationships in general – is more often than not in what is left unsaid« [Francesca Melandri]. [Francesca Melandri] Afterwards, Francesca Melandri, Navid Kermani, and Manjeet Mann discuss silence, non-speaking, and the freedom of speech in our culture today in a conversation moderated by Vivian Perkovic.
With the kind support of the Instituto Italiano di Cultura di Berlino.
Musical performance by musicians of the Trickster Orchestra under the direction of Cymin Samawatie.
To kick off the festival, the Berlin winner of the German Book Trade Reading Competition, Celia Spickhoff, will read from Erich Käster’s »Pünktchen und Anton« as part of the SPECIAL »1933–2023«.
The event is in German and English.
![Jalal Barjas: Notizhefte des Buchhändlers | Notebooks of the Bookseller [arab./dt.]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BVHr-9V3UVU/mqdefault.jpg "Jalal Barjas: Notizhefte des Buchhändlers | Notebooks of the Bookseller [arab./dt.]
Der mit dem International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2021 ausgezeichnete Roman zeigt eine Welt der Armut und Entwurzelung: Ein Buchhändler, der seinen Laden verloren hat, verliert sich in den Identitäten von Romanhelden und begeht einige Verbrechen, bis er eine Frau trifft, die sein Leben verändert. »Doch ist es kein Roman der Verzweiflung. Vielmehr sagt der Autor, dass die Auslotung von Schmerz eine notwendige Voraussetzung ist, um neue Träume zu finden und hoffnungsvoll auf festerem Grund wieder aufzustehen« [Jurybegründung The International Prize for Arabic Fiction].
Sprecher: Roland Schäfer
Winner of the 2021 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, this novel depicts a world of poverty and uprooting: a bookseller who has lost his store gets lost in the identities of characters from novels and commits several crimes until he meets a woman who changes his life. »Despite this, the novel does not call for despair. Rather, through it, the author is saying that reaching the depths of pain is a necessary condition for finding new dreams and standing up once more with hope on firmer ground« [Jury The International Prize for Arabic Fiction].
Speaker: Roland Schäfer")
