10th – 15th October 2013

From October 10th to 15th 2013, the Literature Festival Ruse will take place again presenting innovative authors from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. Under the motto “Not Only Books”, this year’s edition of the Literature Festival will bring together different personalities, perspectives and formats and present texts that invite to debate and exchange. Apart from the literary readings and performances, the program will include audio plays for the first time. Also a book corner will be set up in Canetti House, where people can exchange books or give them as presents.

10th October: Jezy Pilch – scenic reading with the group Freedom Project
7 p.m. Canetti House

Jezy Pilch, born in Wisła (Poland) in 1952, studied Polish philology in Krakow. In the late 1970s, he became active in the literary underground scene. Since the end of the 1980s, he has published numerous articles, novels and satirical essays, whose style has often been compared to those of Witold Gombrowicz, Milan Kundera and Bohumil Hrabal. His play “The Holy Father’s Skis“, translated by Kamen Rikev, which will be presented in Ruse, is situated in a small Polish town which goes crazy after the rumor of Pope John Paul II’s retiring and settling to rest there spreads… A satire on the cult surrounding John Paul II and the commercialization of the papal image. The scenic reading from Pilch‘s play will be staged by the Freedom Project Group.

Director: Anita Asenova
Multimedia and music: Alex Asenov
Actors: Anelia Miteva, Rosen Mintschev, Michail Minchev, Teresa Kincheva, Vasil Iliev, Alex Tsonev

11th October: Reading with Iris Hanika
5:30 p.m. Canetti House

Iris Hanika, born in 1962, currently residing in Berlin, studied Comparative Literature and was associate at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Occasional publications in the 1990ies, with an increasing frequency in the past years. Until 2008, she wrote as a regular columnist for the essay magazin Merkur. In 2006, Iris Hanika was awarded the Hans-Fallada prize, in 2010 she won the Prize for Literature of the European Union for her novel “Das Eigentliche“ (“The Ultimate Thing“), about the crimes of the Nazi era told from the perspective of an archivist at the (fictional) Institute for the Management of the Past. On October, 11th Iris Hanika will read some excerpts from her novel „Das Eigentliche“, recently published by Elias Canetti Publishing House.

11th October: Literary performance with Kalin Terziyski and Jimmy Band
7 p.m. Canetti House

Kalin Terziyski, born in 1970, worked as a doctor before starting writing for magazines like SAX, Едно and Night life. In 2000, he gave up his career as physicist altogether. Since then, he has dedicated himself to writing and his literary club Literature|Dictatorship. In 2011, he was awarded the Prize for Literature of the European Union. His works range from poems, short stories and screenplays to two novels with the nice titles “Alcohol“ and “Crazyness“. On October, 11th he will celebrate a literary performance together with The Jimmy Band.

12th October: Audio plays – presentation
3 p.m. Canetti House

Literature is not only to be found between two book covers, but has been using other media for a long time. The audio plays to be presented at the Literature Festival comprise acclaimed productions from Bulgaria and Europe which cover a wide spectrum of acoustic literature and art: documentary features, novel adaptations and theatrical texts, as well as experimental narratives and sound collages between speech and noise. The pieces include:

Silvia Choleva: Come lay on me (Bulgaria 2013)
Teodora Dimova: The Innocents (Bulgaria 2012)
Daniela Manolova: A Longer Road to the Battlefield (Bulgaria/Finland 2012)
Oliver Kontny: Republik der Verrückten (Germany 2012)
Stefano Giannotti: Geologica (Italy 2007)
Antje Vowinckel: Call me yesterday (Germany 2005)

You may listen to the program every day from 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. at Canetti House.

12th October: Reading with Anna Weidenholzer
5:30 p.m. Canetti House

Anna Weidenholzer, born 1984 in Linz, lives and works in Vienna, where she studied Comparative Literature. In 2012, she was a scholarship-holder of the Literary Colloquium Berlin and a writer-in-residence  in Kitzbühel. She has received numerous awards for her publications, among which stands out the collection of short stories “Der Platz des Hundes“, published in 2010. Her novel “Der Winter tut den Fischen gut“ (“Winter Does the Fish Good“), from which she will read some excerpts in Ruse, was nominated for the prize of the Leipzig Book Fair in 2013.

12th October: Reading with Martin Ryšavý
6:30 p.m. Canetti House

Martin Ryšavý, born in Prague in 1967, studied biology, but works as a writer and film director, today and teaches screenwriting at the Prague Film School FAMU. He has received numerous awards for his oeuvre which comprises of documentaries and short movies as well as of literary works. In 2008, he won the prestigious Czech literature prize Magnesia Litera for his novel “Journeys to Siberia“. He received the same prize for a second time in 2010 for his novel “Vrač”, about the tragicomical adventures of an unsuccessful ex-director in Moscow. In Canetti House he will read excerpts from it.

13th October: Comic Jam and presentation of the comic magazine Co-Mixer
2 p.m. Canetti House

“Co-mixer“ is an in-house comic magazine issued by Milena Simeonova, Slavena Simeonova and Iva Grueva. The three authors study animation at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. “Co-Mixer“ wants to bring together short comics with different drawing styles and offer innovative young writers, mainly from Bulgaria, an opportunity for publication.

Together with Ivalyo Draganov (www.comicsbistro.net), the group will conduct the first comic jam session in Ruse. Like in music, the jam session makes use of improvisation for free drawing. All interested young people are welcome to try out this new form. Registration: irena.markova@eliascanetti.org

14th October: LEXIC-ON Performance
7 p.m. Canetti House

“LEXIC-ON“, a performance by Ognyan Golev, Irina Docheva and their group (www.pds-org.blogspot.com), consists of nine improvised miniatures which combine dance, language and music. Each of them receives its meaning through a specific word. Together they build the three parts of a story, corresponding to the three parts in a Haiku, a traditional Japanese form of poetry. In “LEXIC-ON“, the emphasis is not on personal expression, but on the perception of movement, sound and language as such.

15th October: Reading with Asya Kuleva
5:30 p.m. Canetti House

Asya Kuleva, born in Ruse in 1960, studied German and Bulgarian philology and works as a German language teacher. Besides numerous papers on didactics and literary criticism (among which some on Goethe, Bulgakov and E. Stanev), she has published short stories and other prose. For the Literature Festival she will read from her recent novel “Slippers Made of Marzipan“.

15th October: The Woman with the 5 Elephants
A Film by Vadim Jendreyko (2009, 92 Min)
German with English subtitles
7:30 p.m. Canetti House

The woman in the center of this film is the late translator Svetlana Geier, the elephants are Dostoyevsky’s five great novels. With her translations into German, Svetlana Geier has set new standards. Not only her work but also her life has been extraordinary. Born in Kiev in 1923, she lived through the atrocities of the Stalin regime, lost her father and her best friend and fled to Germany in 1943. The film follows Svetlana Geier on her first trip back to Ukraine and provides an insight into her everyday translation work, her passion for literature and the mystery of words. “The Woman with the 5 Elephants“ has received numerous awards and has been screened on more than 50 international film festivals.