Letters on Democracy

Arnon Grunberg

Arnon Grunberg is one of the greatest Dutch writers of our time, Grunberg wrote many books and countless columns, articles and essays. As an intellectual in de public sphere, he makes use of his Dutch-Jewish heritage while living in New York to be able to reflect critically on the Dutch society. He is known for his books like Tirza and de Heerser.

Photo: Sander Voerman

Oksana Zabuzhko

As an Ukrainian writer and poet, who studied philosophy, she has now two main preoccupations: national identity and gender. Her novel Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex is seen as one of the key texts in post-Soviet Ukrainian literature because she expresses dissatisfaction with the established order of relationships between sexes in Ukraine.

Oksana Zabuzhko is here at the invitation of the Ukrainian Institute, Ukraine.

Photo: European Union 2022, European Parliament

Lana Bastašić

Lana Bastašić is an internationally renowned writer. She was born in Zagreb, former Yugoslavia, but left when she was 24 years old. She won the European Literature Prize for her first novel Catch the rabbit that explores how to deal with living in a country torn by the Yugoslavian war.  She also writes poetry and short stories.

Kamel Daoud

Kamel Daoud is a French-Algerian writer and journalist, living in Oran. His book The Mersault Investigation (Mersault, contre-enquête, 2015) – an answer to the famous novel by Camus, L’Entranger, was his renowned debut. In 2021 he published Zabor, or The Psalms. For the last 30 years, he has been working for Le Quotidien d’Oran, a big French-language newspaper in Algeria.

Drago Jancar

Drago Jancar, born in Maribor in 1948, is a novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright. His works have been translated into many European languages, and his plays have enjoyed a number of foreign productions. In 1974 he was taken into custody over alleged propaganda, and he was active in the democratization of his native country as President of the Slovenian PEN Centre between 1987 and 1991. In 1993 he received the highest Slovenian literary award for his lifetime achievement, and in 1994 he won the European Short Story Award. He lives in Ljubljana.

Photo: Jože Suhadolnik