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France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Canada, China and Romania, this year Israel’s culture, contemporary literature and book publishing is the special guest in Budapest, with a rich programme and the world-famous writer Amos Oz, whose new work, Rhyming Life and Death, will be published in Hungarian just in time for the Book Festival by Európa Publishing. Following a number of renowned colleagues, this year Amos Oz will be presented the Budapest Grand Prize by the Lord Mayor of Budapest after György Konrád’s speech in his honour.
Israel will present many of its faces at the Book Festival, with about a dozen book presentations, literary programmes and on-stage conversations giving an impression of the Israel that preserves its traditions, its history and its culture as well as the economy and politics of the six decades of the modern state. The Guest of Honour presentation also includes concerts and two photo exhibitions. At the Israeli national stand, not only a selection of the production of contemporary Israeli book publishing will be presented, but also books by Israeli writers and from the field of Jewish studies that were published in Hungarian by Hungarian publishers in recent years or especially for the Book Festival.
This year’s Book Festival will welcome writers and exhibitors from 24 countries, and apart from Israel as the Guest of Honour Country, this will be the first time for an Arabian country, Saudi Arabia, to present itself in Budapest—other first-time exhibitors being publishers from Brazil, Vietnam and Austria. As returning exhibitors we will welcome our Polish, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Romanian, Japanese and Chinese partners. Several German publishers and booksellers will have stands at the Budapest Festival, but due to the economic crises that also affects the world’s publishing industry, this is the first time in the history of the Book Festival without a German national stand, as the Management of the Frankfurt Book Fair did not receive the required subsidies form the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs this year.
On the other hand, the European First Novel Festival, the cultural event with the most extensive cooperation in the EU until today, launched following a magnificent suggestion by the French Institute in Budapest ten years ago, is celebrating its anniversary this year. Again, the most successful first novel authors from 17 countries will come to Budapest, among them Viktor Horváth, author of one of the best Hungarian historical novels of the past decades. Including this year’s guests, more than 140 young writers got to know each other and presented themselves to the literature-loving public in the past 10 years, and many of them have become not only significant figures of their respective country’s literature, but can also take pride in a number of foreign translations, such as—to give only one example—György Dragomán, whose works are available in the languages of more than 100 countries.
Contemporary Hungarian literature owes a lot to the competent and mediatory support by the German publishing industry and intellectual life; it was primarily German publishers who established the success of the best of contemporary Hungarian literature. It is thanks to the German book market as one of the most exacting that our writers have become known and renowned in Europe and overseas, and that Hungarian authors were awarded the most significant literary prizes over the past decade and a half. Thus, it is particularly nice that this year, too, the Book Festival hosts a largely successful bilateral literary event, the German-Hungarian Literary Festival, organised in cooperation with the Leibach Foundation and the Budapest Goethe Institute. Arnold Stadler, Tillman Rammstedt and Moritz Rinke will come to Budapest to read from their works together with Péter Esterházy, Noémi Kiss and György Dragomán and give a talk presented by György Dalos.
It is a Hungarian peculiarity that two large-scale book events take place at an interval of merely one and a half to two months every year. As the Festive Book Week, the parade of Hungarian contemporary literature, an unparalleled tradition in Europe established 80 years ago and always held at the beginning of June, focuses on contemporary and classical Hungarian literature and books for children, the Book Festival provides an overview of the whole of the Hungarian publishing industry. There, by comparison with the production of the foreign exhibitors participating at the event, it can be seen whether the portfolio and the appearance of the books by Hungarian publishers keep up with international standards.
The Book Festival is a significant cultural event, visitors can choose from more than 300 programmes. At the same time, these four days serve as the largest professional forum of the Hungarian book market, more precisely the Hungarian language book market. This year’s topics are of particular importance. A professional forum will discuss the situation of book publishing and bookselling and the impact of the crisis. For the first time, the Festival will host the very important conference of the state body fighting piracy and promoting the protection of intellectual property that will assess the possibilities of joint action against the illegal copying of university text books and scientific books. Spring 2010 is also the right time for a professional discussion on business opportunities related to electronic books, digital books and e-book readers and to report on latest developments. The Librarians’ Club attracting some 2000 professionals will again offer a large number of programmes covering the largest-scale subsidy system of Hungarian book culture, called Márai Programme, the development of library services, the Hungarian and universal cultural heritage and its protection and, most importantly, the old favourite topic of developing reading culture and making children regular readers.
Since the Festival moved from the Budapest Congress Centre to the Millenáris, the publishers of children’s and juvenile books can be found in the Fogadó building near one of the main entrances of the park. In the past two years, their varied children’s programmes, meetings of readers with writers, literary quizzes, handicraft workshops, playrooms, fairy-tale contests, puppet-shows and concerts attracted large numbers of youngsters and families with small children. There will be a great variety of programmes again this year, not only in the Fogadó, but also on the large open-air stage of the Millenáris.
The Fogadó also hosts several recurring exhibitions: The Society of Hungarian Book Artists and the Hungarian book illustrators will present the best of their latest works.
The XVIIth International Book Festival Budapest occupies virtually all buildings of the Millenáris, and there will also be book stands in the middle of the park. In past years, we made ourselves and visitors at home at the venue by naming the halls used for literary and professional programmes in the Jövő Háza, the Csodák Palotája and the Fogadó after important personalities of the book trade: after András Hess, who laid the foundations of printing in Hungary, after Imre Kner, the father of Hungarian typography, after Géza Supka, initiator of the Festive Book Week, after Magda Szabó and Ervin Lázár, two much loved and respected figures of Hungarian literature, after Levente Osztovits, the emblematic former Director of Európa Publishing, and after Sándor Márai, the Hungarian writer who was most successful internationally until now. In the three and a half days of the Book Festival, these halls will be the locations of more than 300 programmes, information on which will be available not only in a printed brochure and on the www.bookfestival.hu website, but also on the websites or in the special issues published on this occasion by our partners: litera.hu, the daily Népszabadság, the weekly Heti Válasz, the literary weekly Élet és Irodalom, the Hungarian Lettre International as well as, so we hope, in all printed and electronic media. The Hungarian Radio will provide many hours of reports from its on-site studio, and to those who prefer to inform themselves via the Internet we recommend the Book Festival’s Internet Café.
Traditionally, the Book Festival provides a suitable setting and occasion for presenting the most important trade awards. On 23 April, the Hungarian Section of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, will announce the winners of the Children’s Book of the Year award; on 25 April, the Hungarian Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association will present—based on the secret vote of its members—the Publisher of the Year award for the tenth time and, as successors of the Bookseller of the Year award, the Regional Bookshop and Budapest Bookshop of the Year awards. The Buda Prizes for the book, the CD or audiobook that has made a special contribution to public education were endowed by Dr. Zsolt Láng, Mayor of Budapest’s IInd District. And visitors are invited to vote for the Audience’s Award of the Most Beautiful Hungarian Book Contest held for more than half a century by now, which will be presented to the creators at the opening of the Festive Book Week in June.
Several organisations chose the Book Festival as the best place to celebrate their anniversaries, so the 275th anniversary of the founding of the Miskolc University Library, the 60th anniversary of Móra Publishing and the 10th anniversary of the Institute of Habsburg History—with the presentation of its new series—will be commemorated there.
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