At the Leipzig Book Fair the Federal Foreign Office is catering in three ways to the strong and growing interest among book lovers all over the world in German writers.

Café Europa

The literature forum Café Europa is organized with Federal Foreign Office funding by the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB) in cooperation with the Leipzig Book Fair. This year writers Geert Mak from the Netherlands, Ivana Sajko from Croatia, Feridun Zaimoglu from Germany, Michal Hvorecky from Slovakia and György Konrád from Hungary will share their views on the subject “1989 – 2009: Europe, whither drifting?”

Several other Café Europa events are planned. On Thursday (12 March, 16.00 h) there will be a panel discussion on “Black Humour and South-East European Reality”, on Sunday (15 March, 11.00h) HALMA, a Europe-wide network of literary centres, will present its activities and on Thursday (12 March, 12.00 noon) Martin Kröger from our Political Archive will read from his book “The Envoy's Caravan”, a collection of accounts by German diplomats of their travels over the period 1876 to 1940.

The Federal Foreign Office is also sponsoring a reading by Lebanese writer Youssef Bazzi from his book “Yasser Arafat Looked at me and Smiled” on Friday (13 March, 19.30 h) at Leipzig's Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche and an event with Ilja Trojanow on Saturday, who will present the Sudanese-British writer Jamal Mahjoub and read from his book “In the Hour of Signs” (“blue sofa” event in cooperation with litprom, 14 March, 11.00 h).

Information stand

The Federal Foreign Office has its information stand right next to Café Europa (Halle 4, No. D505). Our staff will be pleased to answer inquiries about our cultural relations and education policy and our cultural sponsoring activities.

Literature and book promotion

This year, too, the Federal Foreign Office is supplying all books nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the “fiction” and “non-fiction” categories to the Goethe-Institut's 70 reading-rooms and libraries across Europe.