The Leipzig Book Fair continues to grow. The exhibition area is being extended by 2,500 m2 and the spring meeting of authors and publishing houses is taking place in four instead of two halls on the Leipzig trade fair ground for the first time. More than 2000 exhibitors will be presenting their products in the city by the River Pleisse from 17 to 20 March, and the number of individual exhibitors has risen. Leipzig will be the venue for a major meeting of authors and their audience again this year, with some 1,200 events having been announced for the “Leipzig Reads” series.

In the GDR, the spring book fair was always also a window to the West – which was also evident in the number of stolen books. After the peaceful revolution, the book show had to reorientate, also in competition with the Frankfurt Book Fair. The encounter between authors and readers was one idea that was consistently applied, first in the old fair halls in the city centre and since 1998 on the new trade fair ground.

The “Leipzig Reads” series, set up in 1991 to support the fair, has long been a festival and trademark in its own right. This year, Christoph Hein, Amos Oz, Adolf Muschg and Jorge Semprun are on the programme, but beginners such as Silke Scheuermann, Dea Loher, Bernd Lichtenberg and Sünje Lewejohann will also make an appearance. Herman van Veen liked it so much in Leipzig in 2004 that he will be coming back this year, again to the Schaubühne Lindenfels. Chanson legend Charles Aznavour will be presenting his autobiography there, too. There will be readings at some 200 locations all over the city – also in the newly-opened Museum of Fine Arts.

Books on tape, the focus of the fair, have developed in just five years, making Leipzig the most important venue for German-language audiobooks. All ARD’s radio stations will be attending, alongside 120 publishers; Wolfgang Niedecken will read from Bob Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles and Katharina Thalbach will read from The New Sufferings of Young W.

And of course, the Schiller anniversary is making its mark at the Leipzig Book Fair, with a “Schiller Forum”, presenting new publications in an exhibition and in talks. Rüdiger Safranski, Sigrid Damm and Norbert Oellers will be presenting their books on Schiller, and the Schauspielhaus invites viewers to attend a public rehearsal of its production Schiller Unplugged.

The Leipzig Book Fair is not just a German-language event, however. Guests from twelve countries including Finland, Croatia, Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia will be attending the event entitled “Small languages - Great literatures”, where they will be presenting contemporary literature from their countries. Prominent writers from Poland, Latvia, Ukraine and Albania will be presenting up-and-coming young writers. And a European forum will discuss democracy in Ukraine.

(South) Korea, the guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair, begins its tour of Germany in Leipzig. While German literature is very much in evidence in Korea, there is less interest in Korean literature in Germany – that is now set to change. The Bielefeld-based Pendragon Verlag will be presenting its 25-volume Korea edition. The best-selling writer YI Munyol (Our Twisted Hero), as well as younger writers such as EUN Hee Kyung (A Bird’s Gift) and JO Kyung Ran (Looking for the Elephant), will be presented in readings. And comics from Korea, too, called “manhwa”, are to be seen at the Leipzig Book Fair in the sections for children’s and youth literature and comics, which make up about one-third of the exhibition area.

The Leipzig Institute for German Literature, which was set up in 1995 as the successor of the “Johannes J. Becker Institute for Literature”, is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a congress on literary writing. More than 30 institutes from Europe and overseas will be presenting their experiences with creative writing. The audience, too, will benefit from this congress, however. On 17 March, there will be a “Long Reading Night” in the Moritzbastei, starting at 6.00 p.m., attended by more than 40 writers, including Breyten Breytenbach, Patricia Duncker and Kerstin Hensel.

And the “Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair” will be awarded for the first time. In autumn 2004, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association took the “German Book Prize” away from Leipzig and aims to revive it in Frankfurt. The Fair, the City and the Free State of Saxony reacted by advertising the new award, which comes with a cash prize of EUR 45,000, which will be made in the fiction, non-fiction/essay and translation categories. 586 proposals, 80 of which are from the spring programmes, were submitted by publishers – the jury will not decide who is to receive the prizes until shortly before the award ceremony, which is to be held in the Glass Hall on 17 March at 5.00 p.m. Oliver Zille, Director of the Leipzig Book Fair, said of the new award: “Through this prize, we aim to give something back to the writers who have made Leipzig the audience festival.”

Ute Grundmann

Further Information:

www.leipziger-buchmesse.de

www.mdr.de/leipzig-liest