5th October, Thursday

Start: 18.00 at Canetti House

The evening begins with an exhibition of Polish posters, continues with the book “The East” by Andrzej Stasiuk and ends with the novel “The Butterfly Hunter” and its author Kostadin Kostadinov – one of this year’s nominees for the Elias Canetti National Prize. The exhibition gathers posters by some of the most famous names of the Polish poster school. The country has a rich tradition in this art and in 1968 the world’s first poster museum was established in Vilanov.

At 18.30 the meeting with “The East” and its author Andrzej Stasiuk begins. He is one of Poland’s most awarded writers and it is no coincidence that his favourite book is Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”. Stasiuk was expelled from three consecutive schools and did not complete high school, which did not prevent him from developing. He read Dylan Thomas and Allen Ginsberg in the original and contributed to various underground opposition publications. He has worked in all sorts of places, including as an orderly in a mental hospital and a street musician. A convinced pacifist, Stasiuk deserted the army and served a year and a half in a military prison, where he “gained life experience without having to kill anyone.” The novel “The East” was published in Bulgarian last year and is not just a chronicle of a journey through Russia, Mongolia and China. Andrzej Stasiuk travels and philosophizes, but in a strange and seemingly upside-down way.

At 19.30 it is the turn of “The Butterfly Hunter” – the novel that gave the jury enough reason to nominate Kostadin Kostadinov for the “Elias Canetti” Literary Award this year. The novel revives the myth of the Danube Atlantis and its inhabitants. The plot is based on the folk belief that when a person dies, the next day a butterfly comes and lands on the grave and takes away the soul of the dead. Each of the butterflies in the novel is a mirror image of the deceased.

All of this tonight in Canetti House at 18.00