Konzerthaus, Berlin
© Nora Jakub
Michal Hrorecký, born in 1976, lives in Bratislava. Three of his novels and a novella have been published in German; Hvorecký regularly writes for the German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die ZEIT as well as numerous journals. In Slovakia, he is known as an advocate for freedom of the press and against anti-democratic developments. Hvorecký’s books have been translated into eleven languages. Hvorecký received the International Journalists’ Prize in Berlin in 2009, followed by the Tatra Banka Arts Award in 2010.
© Katja Sämann
Saša Stanišić was born in Višegrad (Yugoslavia) in 1978 and has lived in Germany since 1992. His debut novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone was translated into 31 languages. With Before the Feast, Stanišić landed another hit; in Germany the novel was a SPIEGEL bestseller and won the prestigious Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. In Germany, his collection of short stories Fallensteller received the Rheingau Literature Prize as well as the Schubart Literary Award. Saša Stanišić lives and works in Hamburg.
© Michael Schwarz
Tanja Maljartschuk was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, in 1983. She studied philology at the University of Ivano-Frankivsk and worked as a journalist in Kiev after graduating. In 2009 a collection of her short stories was published under the title Neunprozentiger Haushaltsessig, followed by her novel Biografie eines zufälligen Wunders in 2013 (published in English as A Biography of a Chance Miracle, 2018) and Von Hasen und anderen Europäern in 2014. In 2018 she received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt for her text Frösche im Meer (Frogs in the Sea). The author regularly writes columns for Deutsche Welle (Ukraine) and for Zeit online. She has lived in Vienna since 2011.
© Robin Skjoldborg
Jonas T. Bengtsson, born in 1976, is the winner of the renowned Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize and the author of four novels. For Amina’s Letters (2005) he won the Danish Debut Novelist Prize. This was followed by Submarino (2007, adapted for film by Thomas Vinterberg) and Et eventyr (2013, published in English as A Fairy Tale). Jonas T. Bengtsson lives in Copenhagen.
Michal Hvorecky, Saša Stanišić, Tanja Maljartschuk and Jonas Bengtsson come from Slovakia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Denmark. Over ten years ago, they already wrote about „their Europe“ as part of the festival. About liberty, equality, fraternity. Since then they have seen a lot. Won major literary awards. And now they have plenty to tell.
The language of this event is German