Celebrating the International Booker Prize Shortlist: Six Special Events Live, Free and Online

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Following this evening's exciting International Booker Prize shortlist announcement, we are thrilled to let you know that we are teaming up with The 2021 International Booker Prize to present a series of six special events with this year's shortlisted authors and translators. The first #event kicks off on Thursday 29 April with writer #olgaravn and translator Martin Aitken on their existential and atmospheric science fiction novel The Employees. All the events will be FREE to watch and broadcast live from our website, and you can purchase any of the books in the series from the Book Festival's online bookshop here.

Olga Ravn & Martin Aitken with Heather Parry
Thursday 29 April | 7.30pm BST | Watch live on our website here
Since she published her debut novel Celestine in 2015, #olgaravn has come to be regarded as one of the most influential writers in contemporary Danish literature. Her new book, The Employees, is a precisely-constructed jewel that takes readers aboard the Six-Thousand Ship as it hurtles through the far-flung universe in the 22nd century. As humans and humanoids give witness statements in testimony to their life in space, it becomes increasingly clear that the occupants of this spaceship are moving towards an uneasy climax that mirrors our own capitalism-driven existential crisis. Brilliantly translated into English by award-winning translator Martin Aitken, whose own work spans Danish and Norwegian literature, The Employees is a small masterpiece. Ravn and Aitken discuss their work with Scotland-based writer Heather Parry.

Mariana Enriquez & Megan McDowell with Daniel Hahn
Thursday 6 May | 7.30pm BST |  Watch live on our website here
Translator Megan McDowell has worked with many of the new generation of Latin American authors – including #marianaenriquez, Lina Meraune and Samanta Schweblin – to bring their stylish, gothic writing to enthusiastic readers all over the world. This evening, McDowell and journalist, novelist and short story writer Enriquez discuss the explosive collection of short stories, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Packed with ghoulish apparitions, uncontrollable desires and weird imaginings, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is a visceral, fist-clenched, full-throated assault on all the senses – fearless fiction that feels perfectly attuned to our times. In today's session, Enriquez and McDowell talk with renowned writer, editor and translator Daniel Hahn.

David Diop & Anna Mocschovakis
Thursday 13 May | 7.30pm BST | Watch live on our website here
When we imagine the experiences of those who fought in 'The Great War', whose perspective are we taking? Perhaps the majority of histories have taken a Eurocentric view. Not French-Senegalese author #daviddiop, whose unforgettable short novel At Night All Blood Is Black paints a starkly different picture of the brutal 1914-18 conflict. Anna Moschovakis is a translator who is fascinated by the spaces where 'languages, forms and subjectivities meet' and has brought Diop's elegant, spare prose to English-speaking readers as Diop conjures up a picture of fresh hell, and takes his lead character, Alfa Ndiaye - a Senegalese man fighting as an African legionnaire for the French - right into the heart of it. In today's session Diop and Moschovakis discuss this indelible novel.

Benjamin Labatut & Adrian Nathan West with Jay G Ying
Thursday 20 May | 7.30pm BST |  Watch live on our website here
Benjamin Labatut, born in the Netherlands and living in Chile, is an emerging superstar with an approach to writing that refuses to settle into a neatly-defined genre category: essay, memoir, conjecture and pure fiction – Labatut deploys them all. His third book, When We Cease To Understand the World, has been translated from the Spanish by writer and translator Adrian Nathan West, who used his prior knowledge of the Second World War and sought out original documents from scientific history to render this 'nonfiction novel' into English.
In gripping and dazzling text, Labatut and West have turned science into a series of imaginative extrapolations. According to the Evening Standard, 'it may be possible to feel your brain getting bigger as you read.' In today's session Labatut and West discusses this majestic book with writer, critic and translator Jay G Ying.

Maria Stepanova & Sasha Dugdale with Allan Little
Tuesday 25 May | 7.30pm BST | Watch live on our website here
In an era when everything from photographs to credit cards and notes can all be preserved and stored on our personal devices, what is the impact on our own brain's ability to store memories? Maria Stepanova's astounding meta-memoir is a panoramic, absorbing reflection on the nature of memory, filtered through the lens of her own family's history as Jewish #people living in Soviet Russia. Superbly translated by poet, playwright and translator Sasha Dugdale, In Memory of Memory begins with Stepanova sorting through the possessions of her beloved aunt after her death, and piecing together a picture of life in Soviet Russia. Dugdale's translation allows the book to expand seamlessly to a meditation on the nature of memory that sets her in a literary constellation including WG Sebald, Proust and Susan Sontag. In today's (surely unforgettable) session Stepanova and Dugdale are joined by BBC journalist and writer Allan Little.

Éric Vuillard & Mark Polizzotti with Amelia Gentleman
Thursday 27 May | 7.30pm BST | Watch live on our website here
Writer and film-maker #ericvuillard was catapulted to fame in his native France when he won the Prix Goncourt in 2017 for his novel The Order of the Day, set in Austria in the lead-up to the Second World War. This also began the working relationship between Vuillard and translator Mark Polizzotti, who join us this evening to discuss their latest collaboration, The War of the Poor. In this newest work, Vuillard goes further into history with a deeply-engaging account of the life of a radical preacher in 16th-century Germany. Thomas Müntzer's astonishing life is much less distant from an 21st-century English-speaker's perspective than it may at first sound – not least because Vuillard's short novel is as entertaining as a thriller and rendered brilliantly into English by Polizzotti. In this evening's #event, Vuillard and Polizzotti discuss the novel with Amelia Gentleman, journalist and author of The Windrush Betrayal.

World Book Night - Friday 23 April

This Friday we'll be joining the UK's annual celebration of books and reading – World Book Night – and taking some time out to enjoy #ReadingHour from 7-8pm.

This hour is for you to dedicate to reading in any way. You could read alone or with others, watch a Book #festival event from our archives, or call a friend to share recommendations and discuss what you want to read next.

In time for #ReadingHour – and with thanks to support from players of People's Postcode Lottery and a generous donation from Morrisons in Granton – we have been busy distributing self-care packs to community groups across #edinburgh, including to our partners Scran Academy, WHALE Arts, the Pennywell Pantry, Goodtrees Neighbourhood Centre and the North #edinburgh Foodbank. The packs are filled with self-care treats and most importantly, a copy of Stories to Make you Smile, which features feel-good stories by ten bestselling novelists. Sandi Toksvig is hosting an #event about the book straight after #ReadingHour at 8pm, click here to find out more and book your free ticket. 

You can follow our friends @WorldBookNight on Twitter, and don't forget to get involved and share how you're celebrating using the hashtag #ReadingHour.