The Netherlands and US sci-fi writer John Scalzi will be the guests of honour at this year’s International Book Festival which will also feature a roundtable of EU Literature Prize laureates between Sept 28 and Oct 1, the organisers said on Wednesday. The Netherlands will offer at its national stand presentations by top contemporary authors such as writer-journalist Arnon Grunberg, essayist-sociologist Abram de Swaan, writer, theatre and opera director Martin Michael Driessen and Annamarie Bon, the widely popular author of children and youth books, the Dutch embassy’s press and cultural attaché told a press conference. The programme has been organised for two years in cooperation with the Budapest ELTE University of humanities and the department of Netherlandic studies at the Károli Gáspár Reformed University, and includes presentations on Dutch-Hungarian ties and panel discussions with Hungarian translators and experts of Dutch works, he said.
Multi-award winning author John Scalzi, the former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, will be hosted at a podium discussion on September 30 in the afternoon, said Krisztián Kovács, communications director of the Hungarian publishing house of Scalzi’s works. “The American star author’s invitation as a guest of honour to this year’s festival is an excellent opportunity for building bridges between classic fiction and high-standard popular literature,” he said. Scalzi will receive the Grand Award of Budapest from the city’s mayor on the opening day, Katalin Gál, the president of the association of Hungarian publishers and book sellers (MKKE), said. The festival will feature 40 international authors and 180 programmes with some 200 book-signing events, she said.