Prominent writers from Turkey, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain ,
\nthe US and Romania participated, between December the 2nd and 4th
\nin the 8th Bucharest International Literature Festival. The first
\nevening of the festival offered a literary encounter between two foreign prose
\nwriters born in Romania: Gy\u00f6rgy Dragom\u00e1n of Hungary, one of the most awarded
\nEast European writers of the time and Swiss prose writer Dana Grigorcea, one of
\nthe highly acclaimed writers of German expression.<\/p>\n
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\n
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Gy\u00f6rgy Dragom\u00e1n was born in the central Romanian
\ncity of Targu Mures and settled in Hungary, back in 1988. The first novel
\nbearing his signature and translated into Romanian is The White King, brought
\nout by the Polirom Publishers in 2008. This novel won the Tibor D\u00e9ry and
\nS\u00e1ndor M\u00e1rai Prizes in Hungary and has been translated into over 30
\nlanguages. British filmmakers are currently carrying out a project to make a
\nmovie based on this novel in the UK. In 2011, Gy\u00f6rgy Dragom\u00e1n won the Jan
\nMichalski Literary Prize for the same novel. In 2014, Dragoman published his
\nthird novel The Bone Fire (M\u00e1glya in Hungarian), which enjoyed great success
\nin Hungary and is currently being translated in the US, the Netherlands and
\nGermany, as a confirmation of the author’s special vision and style which have
\nalready won over the public at large. Ildik\u00f3 G\u00e1bos-Foar\u0163\u0103 translated both
\nGy\u00f6rgy Dragom\u00e1n’s books into Romanian. I keep thinking that ideas are actually
\nmemories. Ideas and memories come from the same place and this is how the past
\nis being built. Actually, this book is an exercise in my attempt to built my
\npersonal past and identity, says Gy\u00f6rgy Dragoman, referring to his latest
\nnovel, The Bone Fire: <\/p>\n
\n
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Gy\u00f6rgy Dragoman: I’ve asked
\nmyself all sorts of questions and I believe that in the end, the book is the
\nonly answer I was able to formulate. I knew I would write about memory. When I
\nstart writing a book, I start from a concrete image, which lingers in my mind
\nand it is only afterwards that I use axioms. This time, I’ve used the following
\naxiom: how can you remember something if you try not to. Can you remember
\nsomething if there are no memories? <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I didn’t intend to write books based on historical issues,
\nbut books on possible liberties, in a society where freedom shouldn’t exist.
\nThe first 15 years of my life that I spent in Targu Mures are extremely
\nimportant to me, says Gy\u00f6rgy Dragoman, who will further dwell on his working
\nmethod. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
G. Dragoman: This is just like a building. I have a
\nfragment, some images and afterwards every image becomes the nucleus of a short
\nscript. By juxtaposing these images, I manage to make a building. And I feel
\njust like an architect who makes a building, living inside it. It is only after I have written a third of
\nmy book that I understand how the structure takes shape. And I always make
\npublic fragments of the books I am writing. I choose fragments that can also
\nfunction as short prose and I publish them. To me, there is a close relation
\nbetween short prose and novels, and I can’t possibly make a clear-cut
\ndifference between the two. A novel can always be developed starting from short
\nprose. And I also believe that short prose should include just as many
\nquestions and direction lines as a novel. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The prose writer of Romanian descent, Dana Grigorcea, is one
\nof the budding and highly acclaimed names of the world literary scene. Her
\nlatest novel, Das prim\u00e4re Gef\u00fchl der
\nSchuldlosigkeit, (The Original Feeling of Innocence) entered the race for
\nBest Book of the Year in Switzerland, and it won the 3-Sat Prize of the
\nIngeborg Bachmann literary contest. . <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
This seems to be only the
\nbeginning of the novel’s way to success, given the appraisals made by the
\nbest-known German language publications. A captivating portrait of Romania
\nthat culminates with the revolt of the Romanian people in its aspiration for
\nfreedom and change writes Die Zeit. Dana Grigorcea has gone on a tour to
\npromote her novel Sentimentul primar
\nal nevinovatiei – The original feeling of innocence and she will next share
\nwith us the reaction of the public in the German space. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
TRACK: In Germany, the audience
\nreacts to reading. People laugh, there are people who hold their breath, and
\nothers get scared, become anxious or are eager to ask questions. In Romania the
\naudience is quieter. While I was reading, I kept raising my head to see if
\nthere is still anyone in the room because everybody was so quiet. I have read
\nin Austria, Germany and Switzerland, I have had literary evenings in France
\ntoo, and in all these places people are very involved, they manifest their
\npresence, want to participate. In Bucharest people are just curious to see
\nwhat’s going on. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
According to Die Presse, the
\nprose of Dana Grigorcea seems to be painted by thick, courageous, attractive,
\nopulent and humorous lines. Here is Dana Grigorcea: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The way in which I
\nperceive my new novel depends very much on the audience. The audience in
\nGermany reacts differently from that in Switzerland. There is one passage that
\nI read quite frequently, in which I tell how I became a pioneer, and I can say
\nthat each reading was met with a different reaction. In the former Democratic
\nRepublic of Germany, people react differently from those in Dusseldorf or
\nHamburg or Switzerland. There are certain jokes I make in the novel at which
\npeople laugh more in Switzerland than in Austria. There are certain subtleties
\nwhich the audiences in Austria perceive quicker than in Switzerland. Therefore,
\nthrough my book, I manage to get to know my public and get through to different
\nmentalities, depending on the place.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The new novel of the
\nRomanian-born writer Dana Grigorcea speaks about the political change in
\nRomania seen from the perspective of her childhood memories and from that of
\nher return to Bucharest, ART-TV notes. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prominent writers from Turkey, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain, the US and Romania participated in the 8th Bucharest International Literature Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[44755,44757,44756],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-160786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture","tag-bucharest-international-literature-festival","tag-dana-grigorcea","tag-gyorgy-dragoman"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n