European Literature Night 2020

The European Literature Night, a EUNIC Netherlands project, brings together both celebrated authors and promising literary talents from all over Europe. It is a space for exploration, for understanding differences and recognising similarities, reimagining ‘Europeanness’ for both authors and audiences. This year’s theme is Literature, the Antidote.

Never before have we been so connected and so isolated at the same time. What will our world look like after the pandemic? According to Arundhati Roy Covid-19 "is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next", which "forces humans to break with the past and to imagine their world anew." How can we imagine this world? What can literature predict on the basis of the experience of the past months in Europe? Let’s listen to the European writers of today, the antennae of our societies. Can literature be an antidote?

The European Literature Night is this year part of the Forum on European Culture, and paired with the State of European Literature, a key note co-organised by the University of Amsterdam (Faculty of Humanities, ACES, supported by OSL). This annual lecture, this year inaugurated by Philipp Blom, will address the state of literature in Europe and the state of Europe through the perspective of literature.

This years authors include Eric Ngalle Charles (United Kingdom), Pavla Horáková (Czech Republic), Pierre Jarawan (Germany), Nathalie Azoulai (France), Juan Gómez Barcena (Spain), Abdelkader Benali (Netherlands), Margot Vanderstraeten (Belgium), Paulus Hochgatterer (Austria), Tomas Vaiseta (Lithuania), Monique Schwitter (Switzerland), Nataša Kramberger (Slovenia), Nicola Lagioia (Italy). Find their biographies in the line-up of Forum on European Culture 2020.

The Literature night will take place at De Brakke Grond, on Friday the 18th of September from 9.00 pm – 11.00 pm. Tickets can be bought on the website of the Forum on European Culture, where you can also find biographies of the authors.

The European Literature Night is organised with the help of British Council Netherlands, Litouws Cultureel Centrum, De Brakke Grond, Tsjechisch Centrum, Instituto Cervantes, Goethe Institut Niederlande, the Embassy of Switzerland, Institut français des Pays-Bas, DutchCulture, and the Embassy of Austria.