18.00,
Sava Ognqanov Theatre foyer
19.00, Austrian Library
On the third day of the International Literary Festival of Ruse we celebrate the national holiday of Germany with the exhibition Reading through Socialism: the GDR and the NRB. It will be opened at 18.00 in the foyer of the Sava Ognqanov State Theatre and, like every event of the festival, will be an opportunity for questions, opinions, evaluations, as well as personal memories on the topic. The exhibition has been created by the Federal Foundation for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in Germany, and four panels on the cultural history of Bulgaria have been added by the Sofia Platform Foundation, the Institute for Studies of the Recent Past and the New Bulgarian University. “Reading during the Socialism: the GDR and the NRB” is about the stubbornness of people who don’t want to be dictated what to read, who line up for rare books, and who secretly pick up some of the most sought-after West German editions at the Leipzig Book Fair.
An hour later, at 19.00, in the Austrian Library begins the meeting with Irina Papancheva and her novel “Brussels Naked”. She has lived in the European capital, this 21st century Babylon, for a long time. She not only lives, but seeks out and discovers places, characters, personalities, emotions that you won’t see in the news. “Brussels Naked” is an experimental novel that I wrote first in English. Each chapter is named after a neighborhood in Brussels where the action takes place, and has a different narrator with a different nationality, race, religious and social background. Although the chapters are almost independent, their characters connect, the stories find their endings, and the result is a whole that is Brussels. The city I chose to live in, exactly twenty years ago, and which has become my destiny. And for my characters. At the literary festival presentation, I will show a video that contains many of the places and even scenes described in the book.” – Irina Papancheva said especially for the festival, and you can read the whole interview on the website of the International Elias Canetti Society – News