Programme of the 9th international literature festival berlin 2009

Wed, 9.09. at 6pm, Haus der Berliner Festspiele / Main Stage
Inauguration
Arundhati Roy (India): Democracy’s failing light
GREETINGS: Joachim Sartorius, Ulrich Schreiber, INTRODUCTION: Michi Strausfeld,
MUSIC: Aydar Gaynullin
In her first, partially biographical novel The God of Small Things, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy
broke the taboo of forbidden love with an “untouchable,” a person who does not belong to any
social caste. In 1996, its first year of publication, the book was translated into 32 languages. For
this work, Roy received the Man Booker Prize for Literature. In 2004, she was awarded the Sydney
Peace Prize for her work in social campaigns as well as her advocacy of non-violence. Event with
simultaneous interpretation. Headsets available in the downstairs foyer.
Wed, 9.09. at 8pm, Haus der Berliner Festspiele / Main Stage
Literatures of the World
Aleksandar Hemon (Bosnia/USA)
PRESENTER: Sigrid Löffler, SPEAKER: Frank Arnold
Hemon’s latest novel Lazarus, portrays the fate of a Jewish immigrant in Chicago, and was
nominated for the National Book Award. Critics praise Hemon’s texts for their masterful command
and powerful use of language. His material, articulated at times using exaggerated imagination,
laconic naiveté, and disrespectful, shocking humour, is predominantly drawn from his experiences
as a Serbo-Croatian immigrant: his hybrid identity is suppressed in the distant, surreal past of the
expatriate and the foreignness of a new homeland.
Wed, 9.09. at 8pm, Haus der Berliner Festspiele / Side Stage
Focus Arab World
Poetry Night I
PRESENTER: Silke Behl SPEAKERS: Margarita Broich and Friedhelm Ptok
Nujum Al-Ghanem (United Arab Emirates). Like many poets of the younger generation, she writes
her short poems in so-called “free verse,” a clear readable style which is primarily used to write
about themes of love and desire.
Joumana Haddad (Lebanon). Occasionally experimental in her means of expression, her poems
often deal with the themes of equal rights and female desire. She writes temperamental, sensual
short stories, and is the editor of Body magazine.
Abed Ismael (Syria). Ismael has published five collections of his poetry to date. He is trying, in his
own words, to “rehabilitate illusions […], to glorify deception as one of the forms of freedom.”
Moncef Mezghanni (Tunisia). His poems are short and the language sparse. Mezghanni’s
popularity is largely due to the way he performs his poems, making them seem like sound poetry.
Ghassan Zaqtan (Palestine). His poetry speaks in glowing images of life, death and the everyday
goings-on in the Palestinian territories, which he describes as a life-long stay in a shunting yard or
waiting room in light of the unsolved conflict with Israel.
Wed, 9.09. at 8:30 pm, Collegium Hungaricum
Focus Arab World_Specials
Intimacy under construction
A project by Nora Amin and Gesine Danckwart: Berlandria, Bluephase 2009.
The theatre and film makers Nora Amin and Gesine Danckwart spent over a year together, at first
virtually and then on location in Egypt and Germany, researching and developing texts and
strategies for performance. Objectively personal and vulnerably political, each opens herself to
questioning by the other about her life and environment. A reading performance and lecture from
everyday life about work, survival strategies, freedom, and loneliness in East and West.
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