Tokyo – Writers from sixteen countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Holland, Czech Republic, Spain, Poland, Portugal, and Hungary) animate the second edition of the European Literature Festival, organised by the European Union Delegation to Japan and EUNIC Japan in collaboration with LitStock and under the patronage of J-WAVE. Over three very intense days, at Europa House, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Institut Français, the Czech Centre, HMV & Books Shibuya, and at Tokyo Big Site there will be public readings, debates, and dialogues between European and Japanese writers on themes such as the relationship between literature and gender, writing literature in Japanese as a foreign language, and writing about difference and excess. The event will be held in Italian and Japanese with simultaneous translation in English. Italy is represented by the novelist Paolo Cognetti with his The Eight Mountains, whose Japanese translation by Sekiguchi Eiko came out in October for the Shinchōsha editions. The book won the Strega Prize and the Prix Médicis Étranger in 2017. On Saturday November 24th at 16:00 at the Italian Institute of Culture, Cognetti will present “The Eight Mountains” and read some excerpts in dialogue with Matsuie Masashi, former director of the series of foreign literature for Crest Books (Shinchōsha) and author of numerous novels among which “Kazan no fumoto de” (At the Foot of the Volcano, 2012). (9Colonne)
