Budapest International Book Festival Opens

"Who will protect us from ourselves if letters and words abandon us, if sentences freeze into unspeakability and language shatters into fragments?" It was a strikingly dark question with which author András Visky opened the 31st Budapest International Book Festival on Thursday, but it set the tone for four days devoted to the defense of the written word at the Hungexpo Budapest Congress and Exhibition Center.

The festival has grown into one of the region's most substantial literary gatherings, and this year it comes with a distinctly Alpine flavor: Germany, Switzerland and Austria share the honors as guests, with nearly 200 programs and 400 book-signing sessions packed into the long weekend. German-language contemporary writing takes center stage, a deliberate showcase of the three countries' literatures rarely seen together on one stage, as Katalin Gál, president of the organizing Association of Hungarian Book Publishers and Booksellers, announced at a press conference last week.

The Swiss presence carries its own motto, "we connect in many ways", which Ambassador Alexander Renggli said at the opening was meant to highlight ties "binding our countries together, spanning everything from politics and the economy to science, education, culture, and personal encounters". Renggli had already previewed his country's line-up last week, naming three Swiss-based authors, Nelio Biedermann, Melinda Nadj Abonji and Christian Kracht, the first two with strong personal connections to Hungary.

The guest of honor, however, arrives from rather further west. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Toibin will receive the Budapest Grand Prize, and Hungarian readers will be able to judge his latest book, The Magician, in their own language, as the Hungarian edition is due out by the time he appears, Gal said last week. Irish literature is the festival's second focus, marking fifty years of Irish-Hungarian diplomatic relations.

The German-language countries are sending their own stars: Martina Hefter and Eugen Ruge for Germany, as announced by Miriam Burns, head of the Budapest Goethe Institut, and Tonio Schachinger and Dimitre Dinev for Austria, in the words of Fabian Ortner, director of the Austrian Culture Forum, both speaking at last week's press conference. More than 100 foreign authors will join their Hungarian counterparts, and Gal has promised that comic books will enjoy a "special place" alongside the literary fiction, with a full program for children.