Fesztivál Programok 2020
Az idén másodszor sorra kerülő PesText irodalmi fesztivál ismét a világirodalmat helyezi fókuszba. Azt, hogy miként képesek az eltérő nyelvek és kultúrák irodalmi alkotásai megjelenni egy másik ország, nép olvasmányélményei között. Éppen ezért a PesText egyik küldetése, hogy ráirányítsa a figyelmet a műfordítás, mint az egyik legfontosabb irodalmi alkotói tevékenység fontosságára. A járványhelyzetre reagálva, módosított koncepcióval indul a fesztivál. A szeptember 22-25. között zajló esemény programjait részben közönség előtt rendezzük, részben az online térben, nemzetközi elérést is biztosítva így a fesztiválnak.
A PesText Fesztivál teljes programját lentebb találod.
Alena Mornstajnova (1963) is one of the most popular Czech writers, whose novel Hana is finally going to be published in Hungarian by the publishing house Csirimojó and presented at the PesText Festival. The novel is a real blockbuster in the Czech Republic: there have been over 250,000 copies sold. The novel is about the life and special relationship of two women, Hana and her niece Mira. It is about the deeply dramatic lifestory of ordinary people: typhoid, holocaust, love and tragedies.
Alžběta Stančáková (1992) Czech poet is the guest of the Visegrad Literary Residency Program in Budapest. In 2015 her first volume, Co s tím, won the Jiří Orten Award for authors making their debut under the age of 30.
Andrzej Stasiuk (1960) is a Polish writer, poet, journalist, essayist. A number of his works have already appeared in Hungarian: a volume of short stories, a travel book and a novel with crime story-like elements. He has been living at the border of Poland and Slovakia in a village of 30 people since 1986. He is managing one of the most significant Polish publishing houses of non-fiction, Czarne, with his wife. The adventures of the years before they moved to the village were included in the book How I became a writer: Attempt at an Intellectual Autobiography (Hung. Hogyan lettem író). It was published in the POKET series as volume 29 with the support of PesText.
Borisz Akunyin (1956), born Grigorij (Salvovics) Cshartisvili is a Russian author of Georgian origin, literary historian and japanologist whose most successful series is the stories of Fandorin’s investigations, which are popular in Hungary, too. In his 2019 collection of short stories The Fiery Finger (Hung. A tüzes pecsét) by the publishing house Szenzár, the Russian celebrity writer invites his readers for a real timetravel into the turbulent centuries of the middle ages in the Kyivan Rus.
Catarina Sobral (1985) is a Portuguese illustrator and writer. She uses different types of visual techniques applying a rich fusion of surfaces and patterns in her two-dimensional graphics. Her book My grandfather (Port. O Meu Avo, Hung. Az én nagyapám) won the International Award for Illustration 2014 at the Bologna Children’s Book Festival. A new book of hers is going to be presented at PesText Festival.
Ernesto Rodrigues (1956) is a Portuguese poet, writer, literary translator and critic. As the lecturer of the Portuguese Department of the university of ELTE in the ’80s he thoroughly explored Hungarian literature. He has translated the works of Bálint Balassi, Milán Füst, István Örkény and Imre Kertész to Portuguese. Rodrigues was awarded the Balassi Bálint Memorial Sword Award in 2002. His latest novel (Hung. Előre nem látható múlt) was published by Prae in 2020. Rodrigues takes his readers to Central Europe and shows them the history and the present of the region from a unique Portuguese perspective.
Léda Forgó (1973) writes in German but was raised in Budapest and played in several Hungarian movies as a child actor. In 1994 she emigrated to Germany. Her play Gól bácsi és a darazsak (Ger. Onkel Gol und die Wespen) was put on stage in 2000 in Göttingen by John von Düffel. In the same year she wrote her novel Mint egy rossz filmben (Ger. Wie im schlechten Film) and won the Literary Scholarship of the Berlin Senate. Her first Hungarian language text was published in 2008 in the journal Irodalmi Jelen in Arad.
Ivana Bodrozic (1982) writer and poet is one of the most interesting Croatian authors. Her novel Hotel Zagorje, which was published in Hungarian by Park, is one of the most significant literary pieces about the Balkan Wars. In the story a nine-year-old girl in 1991 travels to the sea with her brother, who is a few years older. The vacation, however, quickly turns into a tragedy and the family has to flee the Serbian massacre. In the end they find shelter in a refugee home that is called Hotel Zagorje. The little girl describes the events with empathy and irony. We can read about personal tragedies, single-parent families, loss and escape in wartime Croatia from a child’s point of view.
Ivana Gibová (1985) is a Slovakian writer, literary scholar, guest of the Visegrad Literary Residency Program in Budapest. Her second book, Barbora, boch & katarzia got shortlisted for the Anasoft litera prize (an annual literary prize for the best Slovak fiction) in 2017. Her short fiction Borderline was put on stage in Bratislava in Stoka Theater.
Iveta Merglová is a Czech writer and illustrator. Her book Hung. Ema elvan (Cz. Ema sa má) is a comic book for adults published by Csirimojó in Hungary. Satirical and explicit content with images pleasing the eyes.
Orsolya Kalász (1964) is a poet, literary translator living in Berlin and Budapest. She received the prestigious Peter Huchel literary prize in 2016 for her book Das Eine published in Germany. The prize has been awarded annually in Baden-Würtenberg since 1983 with the purpose of promoting German language literature, especially poetry. The jury, consisting of literary critics and authors, awarded her for her “open-minded, inquisitive poetry that is attempting to find its way in the maze of our ever-changing world”.
Lea Sauer (1987) was born in Siegen and presently lives in Leipzig and studies at the German Literature Institute. She has lived in Finland, in Guadeloupe and in Paris. In 2015 her short story Nothing Just Before the Rue Saint-Blaise (Ger. Nichts kurz vor der Rue Saint-Blaise) got shortlisted for the New Voices Award of PEN International. Her latest work is the drama Zeugen from 2019.
Lisbeth Zwerger (1954) is an Austrian children’s book illustrator. She received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1990 for “her lasting contribution to children’s literature”. Between 1971 and 1974 she studied at the Applied Arts Academy of Vienna but she left the Academy before graduation. Since the publication of the first book, which was illustrated by her (1977), Zwerger has been working as a freelance children’s storybook illustrator in Vienna. Her style has been influenced by 19th century British illustrators. Zwerger illustrated the book The Bible (Hung. Biblia – A legszebb történetek gyerekeknek), about biblical stories for kids, published by Naphegy in Hungary.
Marie Štumpfová (1984) Czech illustrator, graphic designer and the arts director of the magazine Page. She is mainly working on children’s publications. The latest piece of her oeuvre is the visual world of the children’s book by Jiří Dvořák (Hung. Hogyan alszanak az állatok?) published by Csirimojó in Hungary. The book uses a kind story-telling tone while it is guiding us through the night looking at the sleeping habits of different animals. Meanwhile we learn other useful information about the different species as well: about their habitat or their most peculiar and unique features. This is all presented in a creative and playful, yet educational manner.
Nora Szentiványi (1969) was born in Hungary, raised in Göteborg, presently residing in Norway. Her autobiographical novel The Apartment (Nor. Leiligheten, Hung. A lakás), published by Scolar in Hungary, has rightfully won The Booksellers’ Grant to Authors. The story is about a couple in the ’70s who pack everything up to move to a new country but they come to realize that it is much harder to leave than they imagined. The distance is painful not only for those on the road but for those who stayed behind too, and they also might drift apart for good.
Oya Baydar (1940) is a Turkish writer born in Istanbul. She has always been a member of the Turkish labour movement, university mobs and demonstrations from a young age. During the coup d’état in 1980 she escaped to Germany and, staying there for 12 years, she became a witness of the collapse of socialist regimes. Baydar returned to Turkey in 1992 where she has been politically active ever since. She published five novels, a volume of short stories and plenty of articles, and she is one of Turkey’s most highly recognised authors. Her 1993 novel Letters of Cats (Turk. Kedi Mektuplari, Hung. Macskakaparás) was published by Libri in Hungary in 2012.
Patrícia Pászt (1971) has been committed to Polish drama as a literary translator and as a literary scholar as well. She has edited five volumes of anthologies and a textbook in the field, all of which were published in the Hungarian publishing house Kalligram. The play by Słobodzianek Our Class (Hung. A mi osztályunk, Pol. Nasza Klasa) has also been translated by her – the piece has been on stage in Katona József Theater for years with a full house.
Pavol Rankov (1964) is Slovakian writer, essayist, journalist, information scientist and university teacher, winner of the EU-prize for Literature, one of the most outstanding representatives of the Slovakian middle generation of writers. He graduated from Comenius University in Bratislava at the Department of Philosophy. The Hungarian version of his new novel has been published at Kalligram. His latest novel Túl a térképen is going to have a book launch at PesText Festival. This is the author’s fourth volume in Hungarian.
Pál Pentelényi has been hunting for the vinyl gems of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s since 2004 (for today his collection has about 2000 pieces). He has been making music as DJ Gandharva since 2005, and in 2008 he started managing the internationally acknowledged label Budabeats. He is also a core member at Soul Cure, which is a fortnightly party event on every second Saturday. He is a songwriter who likes improvising, a teacher who likes learning and a double bass player who likes playing the guitar.
Piotr Socha (1966) is a Polish graphic designer and illustrator, famous for his comic drawings in various magazines, and his educational books (not only) for children. After his popular The Book of Bees (Hung. Méhek) his album The Book of Trees (Hung. Fák) will be published by Manó Könyvek for PesText Festival.
Sabine Hossenfelder (1976) is a German theoretical physicist, researcher of quantum gravity, and the author of the physics blog Backreaction. She publishes in the New Scientist, the Scientific American and in The New York Times on a regular basis. She talks about complex scientific phenomena in a plain, intelligible language both in writing and live speech as well. Hossenfelder has also written and sung a number of songs that are available on her Youtube channel. She is residing in Heidelberg. Her book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Hung. Fizikusok útvesztőben), published in Hungarian by the publishing house Park, discusses problems of fundamental importance. According to Hossenfelder, research in the age of modernity is trapped because researchers are too amazed by the beauty of maths thus, they do not notice the real mechanisms of the convoluted, chaotic world around us. The obsession with beauty and supersymmetry conflicts with the ugly truth of scientific objectivity.
Sayfo Omar (1982) is an expert on Islam and a researcher of the conflicts in the Middle East. He was born in Budapest. In his first book (Hung. Allah tágas földje) he depicts a dystopia about a Europe where the refugee crisis, along with prejudices and hatred, reaches unprecedented proportions. In the tense and tough reality of the novel he is observing the human capacity to overcome these prejudices and to practice empathy towards the complex issues of Muslims living in Europe. The novel is often compared to Houellebecq’s Submission for its topic and outspokenness.
Siniša Tucić (1978) is a Serbian poet born in Novi Sad where he is residing now. In the ’90s in war-torn Serbia he was a member of the anti-regime performance group MAGNET so he was harassed by the authorities several times. Tucić is a suggestive performer, he has visited to Hungary before on a number of occasions and his texts have been published by the journals Ambroozia, Fosszília, Ex Symposion and Tiszatáj.
Steinar Opstad (1971) is a Norwegian poet. He studied German, literary theory and history of religions at the University of Oslo, but he also attended the Writer’s Academy of Hordaland. His first volume of poetry Boards and messages (Norw. Tavler og bud, Hung. Táblák és üzenetek) was published in 1996, and it received one of the most important Norwegian literary prizes: the so called Tarjei Vesaas’ debutantpris which is a prize awarded annually for the best first literary work in Norwegian. Biblical allusions and metapoetry are common in his poems just as much as the theme of family, loneliness and the desire to belong. Opstad has received many literary awards and as early as 2006, when he was only 35, a collection of his best pieces was published (What I Sing about is Simple: Selected Poems).
Zsuzsa Tamás (1978) is a poet and writer living in Budapest. She has worked as a teacher of Hungarian Literature and Grammar, and as an editor (Csillagszálló, Prae.hu), then she became known as a children’s story writer. Her 2013 book Macskakirálylány, published by Naphegy, was voted Children’s Book of the Year by HUBBY (Hungarian Board on Books for Young People). Her latest novel Tövismozaik is being published by Magvető in the fall of 2020. The story is a reminiscence of the crisis of a young female artist and her survival narrated many years later.