October 8th, Sunday

18:00,  Canetti House

On the eighth day of the festival, guests are two women nominated for the Elias Canetti National Literary Award. The program is opened at 18.00 by Joanna Elmi. “Made of Guilt” – the novel that won her the nomination, will be presented for the first time in Ruse. “… It is also a story about the home we carry inside us. The great history of the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria and how it shaped our small, personal stories. For the Bulgarian woman as the main culprit and victim, but also the pleasure, the convenience of being a victim, for the transformation of unnecessary sacrifices into sacred feats and a way of life. About broken cities and dreams. About the Eastern and Western Dependencies…” – says the author of “Made of Guilt” in the special interview she gave for the festival and which you can read at https://eliascanetti.org/2023/10/07/intervyu-s-joanna-elmi/.

“A novel that breaks into The turning point’s nursery, blows the silent up, grabs the throat and starts a conversation, painful, but also understanding” – is Georgi Gospodinov’s assessment of the author’s first novel. It’s only a matter of time how the readers in Ruse will evaluate it,  it starts at 18:00…

Elena Alexieva‘s nomination for the “Elias Canetti” award is for her latest novel “Volcano”. A writer, playwright and translator, she has won some of the major Bulgarian literary and theatrical awards. According to Georgi Angelov, this is “a book that will send you to another reality – your own; a book in which today is yesterday but also tomorrow; a book without characters because everyone is a hero; a book of mournful joy, disconsolate consolation, and fleeting eternity; a scathing, punk poetic book that kicks you off with the first chapter and keeps you electrified until the last.” The meeting with Elena Aleksieva is at 19:00. Everything happens at Canetti House, the entrance is free, and paper book lovers can buy them with a certain discount made by the publishers.