‘Common Threads’: Flanders and The Netherlands at Frankfurt
A timely reminder of shared culture and business in Europe, early elements of Frankfurt Book Fair’s Guest of Honor program for October focus on Flanders, The Netherlands, and ‘what we share.’
At Bruges, in the province of West Flanders in Belgium. Image – iStockphoto: byakkaya
Using the slogan “This Is What We Share,” the ambitious overall cultural program is expected to comprise:
230 Dutch-language titles in German translation, plus 376 new releases in all from and about Flanders and the Netherlands;
132 German publishers with books in Dutch;
31 Dutch-to-German translators in translation houses;
23 authors (NL, FL, D) as writers-in-residence;
70 Dutch-speaking authors at the Frankfurt Book Fair;
60 Dutch-speaking authors on stages around Germany; and
400 literary and cultural events around Germany.
At a press conference last week, the program’s organizers announced that the opening event on the evening of October 18 will feature the youngest Guest of Honor speaker to appear to date at Frankfurt, the Flemish poet Charlotte Van den Broeck, 25, from Turnhout. Previously, that day, The Markets: Global Publishing Summit, which also features Flanders and The Netherlands as one of seven pivotal world publishing markets.
That opening program is also to feature Dutch writer, actor, and columnist Arnon Grunberg. Grunberg and Van den Broeck are to provide an opening reading in the form of a cross-generational dialogue, the first two of some 70 authors—half Flemish, half of them Dutch—who will appear in events at Frankfurt. Genres represented in the overall program are said to comprise fiction, poetry, children’s and YA literature, nonfiction and graphic novels and comics.
Noting the new backdrop of the difficulties now facing the European Union in the aftermath of the UK’s referendum vote to leave the UK, Frankfurt Book Fair Director Juergen Boos at the press conference said:
Image iStockphoto: Ruskpp
“When Flanders and The Netherlands first applied to be Guest of Honor of the Frankfurt Book Fair, it wasn’t clear how great a symbolic effect the joint appearance of the two countries would have.
“And we had equally little idea that the motto ‘This is what we share’ would present such a wise commentary on current events.
“Our Guest of Honor this year has attempted a daring venture, with each side asking questions of the other, while at the same time teasing out their common literary and cultural threads.
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