New Writing In German: Dorothee Elmiger, Nadja Spiegel, Peter Wawerzinek
Mon 22 May | 6pm | Main Space | €10/8
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New Writing in German features three voices making a serious impact on the literary scene. Swiss writer Dorothee Elmiger’s debut Invitation to the Bold of Heart, a startling dystopian tale of hope and exploration, won the Kelag Prize in 2010. In her bittersweet debut collection, Sometimes I Lie and Sometimes I Don’t, Austrian Nadja Spiegel displays what one reviewer described as ‘an artist’s eye for the diamond moments’. Cult poet, artist and writer Peter Wawerzinek’s novel Motherless Child, his exploration of his mother’s abandonment of him as a child, won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2010.
Reporting From The Middle East: Patrick Cockburn & Mary Fitzgerald
Mon 22 May | 8pm | Main Space | €12/10
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The man described by Seymour Hersh as ‘the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today,’ Patrick Cockburn discusses the current situation of Middle East geopolitics with Mary Fitzgerland, award-winning foreign affairs correspondent with the Irish Times. In 2011 she arrived in Benghazi days after anti-Gaddafi protests erupted, and spent months reporting on the uprising that followed. In 2014 Patrick Cockburn forecast the rise of Isis, and with a new USA administration ‘loaded with crackpots, fanatics and amateurs,’ he asks what are the chances of President Trump becoming the next victim of the permanent state of crisis in the wider Middle East?
Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year Awards
Tue 23 May | 12pm | Main Space – By invitation only
Hurray! We’re delighted to host this year’s CBI Book of the Year Awards ceremony. Now in their 26th year, the CBI Book of the Year Awards celebrate writing and illustration excellence in books for young people by Irish authors and illustrators. Broadcaster and book lover Rick O’Shea will announce the winners.
Though a special shadowing scheme, every year young readers decide the Children’s Choice Award winner. A number of participating shadowing groups will meet shortlisted authors and illustrators during ILFDublin. For more information, visit www.cbi.ie.
China Focus: Madeleine Thien & Xiaolu Guo
Tue 23 May | 6pm | Main Space | €12/10
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How can you be an artist when censorship kills creativity? Or live in a regime that fears the inner world of the creative mind? From Communist one-party rule to the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and 1989’s Tiananmen Square protests, Madeleine Thien’s thrilling Man Booker-shortlisted Do Not Say We Have Nothing brings the gruelling tyranny of Mao Zedong’s brutal regime to life; while Chinese-British novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo’s startling new memoir Once Upon A Time In The East has been described as picking up where Jung Chang’s 1991 bestseller Wild Swans left off.
Raja Shehadeh
Tue 23 May | 8pm | Main Space | €12/10
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Palestine’s leading writer, Raja Shehadeh was described by Colm Toíbín as ‘a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy and wise’. Also a lawyer and founder of human rights organisation Al-Haq, Shehadeh joins ILFDublin to discuss his book Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine. John Berger said of Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape – winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize for Political Writing – ‘Towards any proper understanding of history there are many small paths. I strongly suggest you walk with him.’ Don’t miss your chance to do so!
Check out the rest of the ILF Dublin events: