Reading Europe Tour - 5 dates before Referendum Day

The Reading Europe Tour has five dates so far:

London Weekend 

The Cultural Case for Europe. Friday 17th June 7pm
Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Rd, London, EC1R 3GA
Conversation, questions and answers on the peculiar and changing perceptions of the same novel in different languages providing the cultural case for Europe.

Breakfast Briefing. Saturday 18th June 12.30 pm
London Review of Books Shop, 14 Bury Place, London, WC1A 2JL
Authors and translators reading their favourite passages from novels on the Reading Europe List.

Lewisham Garden Party. Saturday 18th June 6pm
Halcyon Books, 266 Lee High Road, London, SE13 5PL
Thoughts, gluten-free beer and readings from the ‘Other Europe’.

Continental Breakfast. Sunday 19th 12 noon
Waterstones Piccadilly, 203 - 206 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9HD
Observations on the notion of breakfast on the European continent.


Happy Manchester 

Reading Europe Manchester. Monday 20 June. 7pm
International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester, M1 5BY
Conversation, questions and answers on the peculiar and changing perceptions of the same novel in different languages providing the cultural case for Europe.

@ReadEuropeTour

Reading Europe Pop Up Shop opens on 4 June in London

Reading Europe together with the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA) are delighted to announce that a pop up shop featuring titles from the Reading Europe List will be on site at the BCSA annual Garden Party on Saturday 4 June. The venue is the garden linking the Slovak and Czech embassies. Entry on the day will be through the Slovak Embassy at 25 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, W8 4QY.

This is the first formal outing for the Reading Europe Pop Up Shop and we're really looking forward to the event and would like to thank the Slovak cultural mission and the BCSA for their enthusiasm for the whole Reading Europe idea.

Reading Europe celebrates Belgian French Literature today

Reading Europe celebrates the French Literature of Belgium  

READING EUROPE FROM UK INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS
There are 24 countries in the EU in addition to the 4 countries in the British Isles and Commonwealth. Before the EU Referendum let us take the opportunity to find out something more about fellow members and neighbours. The recommended titles have been selected to let the reader know the literature, history and culture of each country better.

On 26 May we celebrate the French literature of Belgium.
 
RECOMMENDED TITLES FOR FRENCH LITERATURE FROM BELGIUM
 
Malpertuis by Jean Ray, translated by Iain White (Atlas) ISBN 978 0 947757 98 4, pages 172, £8.99 
A manuscript stolen from a monastery; the ancient stone house of a sea-trading dynasty, which may be haunted. These are familiar ingredients for a Gothic novel. But something far more strange and disconcerting is taking place within the walls of Malpertuis as the relatives gather for the impending death of Uncle Cassave. The techniques of H.P. Lovecraft, when transplanted into the suffocating Catholic context of a Belgium scarred by the inquisition, produce in Jean Ray's masterpiece a story of monumental intensity from which events of brilliant ferocity break the surface without ever lessening the suspense as we are carried towards the tale's apocalyptic denouement.
 
Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell (Dedalus) ISBN 978 1 903517 82 6, 166 pages, £7.99 
The widower Hugues Viane chooses Bruges, the 'dead city' as the most appropriate location to mourn his wife. The sombre labyrinth of streets and canals of Bruges go from being the backdrop for the novel to its central character. Hugues life changes when he encounters a young dancer who reminds him of his dead wife. The clash between tradition and modernity, preserving the past or embracing change is at the heart of Bruges-la-Morte and the other two novels Rodenbach wrote about Bruges.
 
FURTHER READING FROM DEDALUS FOR BELGIUM...

The Bells of Bruges by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell (Dedalus) ISBN 978 1 903517 54 3, 244 pages, £9.99 
'The novel is a story of love and obsession, of two beautiful sister and a man who marries the 'wrong' sister, of an artist in sound whose dedication to his office has something terrible in it. But the dominant character is the city of Bruges, which comes to possess the reader's imagination as it has possessed Rodenbach's and then Mitchell's. This is a beguiling translation, which captures a Lawrentian intensity of sensuous experience.' Helen Dunmore, novelist and chair of the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize judges.
 
Hans Cadzand's Vocation(and other stories) by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell (Dedalus) ISBN 978 1 903517 86 4, 168 pages, £7.99
Hans Cadzand's father dies when he is an infant and he becomes the centre of his mother's life. As he grows up from a pretty child to a serious young man with deep religious convictions, she hopes she will remain the focus of his life. She sees his desire to enter holy orders as a threat to their life together and tries to keep him near her by marrying him off to the daughter of her closest friend. This plan founders on the rock of his vocation, but then Mevr Cadzand engages the beautiful and experienced Ursula as housemaid...

Reading Europe celebrates The Netherlands on 23 May 2016

Reading Europe celebrates The Netherlands on 23 May 2016
 
READING EUROPE FROM UK INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS
There are 24 countries in the EU in addition to the 4 countries in the British Isles and Commonwealth. Before the EU Referendum let us take the opportunity to find out something more about fellow members and neighbours. The recommended titles have been selected to let the reader know the literature, history and culture of each country better.
On 23 May we celebrate The Netherlands.
 
RECOMMENDED TITLES FOR THE NETHERLANDS
Eline Vere by Louis Couperus, translated by Ina Rilke (Pushkin) 1SBN 978 1 906548 26 1, 528 pages, £12.99
Couperus has often been called the Dutch Oscar Wilde and he is certainly one of the most interesting Dutch authors of his period. Eline Vere and her sister Betsy are wealthy young socialites living in The Hague in the 19th century. Eline attempts to break free from the confines of her narrow existence through tumultuous and ultimately disastrous courtships. This classic novel minutely described the conventions, manners and hypocrisies of society with great richness of description and vivid characterisations.
 
The Twins by Tessa de Loo, translated by Ruth Levitt (Arcadia) ISBN 978 1 900850 56 8, 392 pages, £6.99
It tells a compelling story of Anna and Lotte twin sisters who following the death of their parents are separated at a very early age. Lotte is sent to stay with her relatives in the Netherlands to recuperate from tuberculosis and Anna stays with relatives in Germany. The story begins with a chance meeting at the health resort of Spa. Both sisters are now in their 70s and have lost contact with each other and in the intervening years the Second World War has taken place. Thus evolves a tale of human suffering, spanning many decades, from both the German and Dutch perspectives, including the hardships endured in the war.

Diego Marani confirms all London and Manchester dates

Italian author, Diego Marani, whose novel "New Finnish Grammar" features on the Reading Europe list has confirmed he will participate in all Reading Europe Tour events in London plus an extra date, "Happy Monday" at Manchester's International Anthony Burgess Foundation on the evening of Monday 20 June.

Diego will spend the day of 17 June doing press and other media events. If you have any questions or thoughts, please contact ReadingEuropeTour@gmail.com

Dimitri Verhulst confirms 17 June at the FWC London

Dimitri Verhulst, author of "Problemski Hotel", "The Misfortunates" and "Christ's Entry Into Brussels" has confirmed he will participate in the Cultural Case for Europe event at the Free Word Centre on 17 June. The author, is currently filming a documentary series on European authors for Belgian TV and will be accompanied by his film crew at all events.

The Cultural Case for Europe event is the first date of the Reading Europe Tour taking in events in London, Manchester and beyond. The full line-up and dates will be announced very soon.

Kirsten Thorup confirms London Weekend events

Kirsten Thorup, whose novel God of Chance (Norvik), appears on the Reading Europe list, has confirmed she will feature in the London Weekend events taking place on 17 and 18 June.

Kirsten Thorup (b. 1942) has established herself over the past forty years as one of the most widely-read and wide-ranging of modern Danish authors. She has written poetry, plays and novels, often focusing on the fates of outsiders, those who are marginalized because of social, class or ethnic disparities. Much of her material is rooted in her own experiences. The central character of her four novels about Jonna, Little Jonna (1977), The Long Summer (1979), Heaven and Hell (1982) and The Outer Limit (1987), comes as she does from the island of Funen and struggles to adapt to big-city life. In Bonsai (2000) she draws on her own unhappiness in the story of a wife watching her husband dying of Aids, and in No Man’s Land (2003) she depicts the dilemmas faced by a family coping with a fiercely independent but failing elderly parent. The God of Chance (2011) is a story about the bad conscience of Europeans in the face of global inequality, and the problematic results of our well-meaning efforts to make a difference. Trying to play God can lead to unforseen tragedy for donor and recipient alike.