international literature festival berlin (ilb)
Adam Thirlwell, Xiaolu Guo and Kamila Shamsie are the British writers who will participate in 2015's international literature festival berlin (ilb) - a vital forum, staged by and for literary enthusiasts.
Adam Thirlwell
Adam Thirlwell was born in London in 1978 and is currently living in the English capital. His literary debut in 2003 was the novel "Politics", the manuscript of which earned him a place on Granta magazine’s list of Best Young British Novelists. In 2015, the novel "Lurid & Cute" appeared, in which a delinquent narrator, descending a spiral of lies, infidelity, and other immorality, analyzes the limits of morality, the self, and other apparently stable categories.
Thirlwell often writes for newspapers, including the Guardian and the New York Times. In 2011, he was appointed the S. Fischer Guest Professor for Comparative Literature at the Free University Berlin.
Reading
- 12 September, 7:30 pm: "Lurid & Cute" - reading by Adam Thirlwell with Bernhard Robben and Denis Abrahams (tickets from 8 – 4 Euros)
Xialou Guo
Xiaolu Guo was born in 1973 and grew up in southern China. In 2002, Guo moved to London and realized several documentary and feature films that have been screened at international festivals, in addition to writing "A concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" in 2007, her debut in English. Her multi-faceted new novel "I am China" tells the story of two lovers separated in the chaos of the "Jasmine Revolution" who communicate to one another through letters from prison.
Guo was a guest of the DAAD Artists in Residence program in Berlin in 2014. This year, she is a Writer in Residence for Zurich Literature House in Switzerland.
Readings and discussions
- 11 September, 11:30am: Stop the silence - Youth summit and 7:30 pm: "Writing Climate change" - Publication of the Anthology, with Tony Birch, Mirko Bonné, Xiaolu Guo, Jaś Kapela, Oisín McGann. Weather stations puts Literature and Language in the Centre of the Debate on Climate Change (free entry)
- 16 September, 6:00 pm: "I am China" - Reading by Xiaolu Guo, with Bernhard Robben and Nina West (tickets from 8 – 4 Euros)
Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie was born in Karatchi, Pakistan in 1973. She published her first novel, "In the City by the Sea" (1998), shortly after leaving university. Features of this first book are also present in the author’s later works, in particular the affluent middle class as inhabited by her protagonists. In addition to novels, the author also writes short stories, essays and columns for various newspapers and magazines.
Readings and discussions
- 16. September, 17:00 Uhr: City of the Future - discussion with Mohammed Hanif, HM Naqvi, Shamsie (free entry)
- 16 September, 7:30 pm: "A God in Every Stone" - Reading by Kamila Shamsie, (tickets from 8 – 4 Euros)