30th Budapest International Book Festival Next Week

Danish author Janne Teller will be the guest of honor and Romania will be the guest of honor country at this year's 30th Budapest International Book Festival, which will welcome a record number of 162 exhibitors, 118 programs, and more than 300 book signings between October 2 and 5 at the Bálna Defense Center in Budapest.

Janne Teller, a well-known author of contemporary Danish literature, will receive the Budapest Grand Prize, the capital's literary award, while the Romanian Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Romanian Cultural Institute in Budapest, will present the diversity of contemporary Romanian literature in a special pavilion and through a variety of programs, Katalin Gál, president of the Hungarian Publishers and Booksellers Association (MKKE), the event's organizer, said at a press conference in Budapest this week.

Next year, German-language literature will be the guest of honor at the event, so writers from Germany, Switzerland and Austria will be invited first and foremost.

This will be preceded by a presentation by Austrian writer Robert Menasse, who will present the second volume of his European trilogy, entitled ‘The Enlargement’, Katalin Gál added. In 2026, the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Hungary and Ireland will also be commemorated, so Irish literature will also be in the spotlight, according to the MKKE.

Katalin Gál also spoke about the remarkable interest in Hungarian book culture, despite the fact that "a law affecting many book-related professions poses a serious obstacle to progress." She also mentioned that the MKKE did not receive any state support for organizing the festival, despite the fact that it is an international and costly event.

Ioana Anghel, director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Budapest, called her country's guest of honor status a great honor.

She emphasized that this means new dialogues and new platforms for the two countries, as well as an opportunity for Hungarian and international readers to become more familiar with contemporary Romanian literature.

On October 4, Janne Teller will talk about her new book, the novel ‘Are You Proud of Me, Joanna?’, in which readers are introduced to a Danish UN diplomat who embarks on a desperate search after a chance encounter in Paris. In recent decades, more than 1.7 million copies of this book have been sold worldwide, more than 40,000 in Hungary, and it has been translated into more than 35 languages.