The ensemble Naised Köögis (Estonia)
Kristiina Ehin – vocals, karmoshka
Katrin Laidre – vocals, karmoshka bass guitar, ukulele
Sofia Joons – vocals, violin, guitar, rhythm instruments
Kairi Leivo – vocals, bass guitar
Thursday, September 23rd
18.00 Concert of the ensemble Naised Köögis at the Park Library
Christiana Spens (Great Britain)
Christiana Spens is a writer, artist and academic. She is the author of Shooting Hipsters (2016) and The Portrayal and Punishment of Terrorists in Western Media (2019), and regularly contributes to The Irish Times, The London Magazine, Aeon, Studio International, Art Quarterly and Prospect on culture and politics. Her artwork has been featured in The London Magazine, NYRB, Dazed & Confused, Vice, Five Dials, 3:AM Press, as well as The Repeater Book of the Occult (2021). She read Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and earned her PhD in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. She lives in London.
Thursday, September 23rd
Tariq Goddard (Great Britain)
Tariq Goddard is the author of six novels, which have been shortlisted for and won the Whitbread, Wodehouse, Commonwealth and Independent Publishers Awards. He is the Founder and Publisher of Repeater Books, and previously Zero Books. He is currently writing the novel High John The Conqueror, to be published next year.
Thursday, September 23rd
Larissa Joonas (Estonia)
Larissa Joonas is a Russian poet living in Estonia since 1983. She is a multiple nominee of the Estonian Cultural Foundation prize, an author of poetry collections Самый белый свет (The Whitest Light, 2006), Младенцы безумного града (The Young of the Mad Town, 2017), Кодумаа (Homeland, 2017), Мировое словесное электричество (Global Electricity of the Word, 2019), Человеческое кино (Human Cinema, 2020), Пустоши флайтрадара (Wastelands of the Light Radar, 2021). Her poems have been published in literary magazines Волга, Октябрь, Дружба народов, Воздух, and Радуга, but also in other magazines and on the web.
Poems by Larissa Joonas have been translated into English, Italian, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Polish. In 2019 publishing house Arcipelago itaca Edizioni published a bilingual poetry book Un quanto perso in strada in Russian and Italian translated into Italian by Paolo Calvagni. In 2020 a poetry book titled Arütmia või ööbikud (Arrhythmia or Nightingales) was published in Estonian, translated by Aare Pilv. The public of the festival can participate in a meeting with the author and the presentation of the translation.
Thursday, September 23rd
Johanna Venho (Finland)
Johanna Venho (b. 1971) is one of the most prominent writers of her generation in Finland. Venho’s works have won several prizes and been a success in critics. She debuted in 1998 with a collection named Saturn Post (Postia Saturnukseen), where the author explores the bond and the relationship between nature and human beings, and between the adult and the
child, in various forms.
In recent years, Venho has also been writing prose for both adults and children, publishing four novels, five children novels and a number of picture books, working with many Finnish illustrators. Her works have been translated into Czech, English, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Slovene and Swedish.
Venho’s latest novel First Lady (Ensimmäinen nainen) was published in 2019. It is a history-based portrait of former president’s (Urho Kaleva Kekkonen) wife and a writer Sylvi Kekkonen (1900-1974) and a close friend of her, the sculptor Essi Renvall (1911-1979).
First Lady is an intimate, intensive and poetic statement about the choices and sacrifices of a woman living in the shadow of a famous man. The novel was nominated for Finlandia Prize (2019), the most appreciated literature award in Finland. First Lady has been recently published in Estonia (Esimene naine, translated by Kai Aareleid, Varrak, 2021).
Along with her own artistic work Johanna Venho is an active collaborator in literature, having been a chief-editor of a poetry magazine, literary critic and also a teacher of creative writing.
Read more:
Vilja Kiisler „Presidendi abikaasa. Ikkagi inimene“ – Sirp, 14.05.2021
Johanna Venho, Versopolis Poetry
This year ‘Small World’ is the main theme of Prima Vista. What does this phrase mean to you?
“What small world!”, we say when we meet someone in an unexpected place. That sentence expresses delight and the wide world seems more homely for a moment.
Nowadays the world is much more accessible due to the Internet and the media. We are able to communicate face to face with someone living on the other end of the world. This may create a feeling or an expectation that the world is understandable, small and manageable; close and homely. In fact we should think more of how much is hidden from us in consuming the media and who decides what is shown to us.
We say ‘small world’ and smile as we know that this statement is a paradox. The world is extremely big and we see only a small slice of it. In writing and reading the world becomes smaller and more understandable at best. And this way the impossible becomes reality for a moment.
Wednesday, September 22nd
17.00 Launch of the Estonian translation of the novel „Esimene naine. Romaan Sylvi Kekkosest“ (translated by Kai Aareleid; Varrak, 2021) by Johanna Venho (Finland) at Tartu Literature House
Justin Petrone (Estonia)
Justin Petrone ( b 1979) came to Estonia almost 20 years ago. He has described his earlier life in a trilogy called Minu Eesti. In the most recent years, after divorce, he has mostly been living in Viljandi.
Justin’s books about Estonia have all become bestsellers. How does he manage in Estonia?
How does he see Estonians and how has he been received here?
He presents everything without embarrassment and honestly, although his life here has not always been easy.
Thursday, September 23rd
Kertu Sillaste (Estonia)
Kertu Sillaste (b 1973) is a book illustrator and art teacher, instructor of illustration courses, and the author of six picture books and one wordless book.
Creating her books, she chooses themes which seem important and inspiring to her. She enjoys creating the text and the picture, telling part of the story with pictures, another part in words–one needn’t repeat the other.
She uses different techniques in illustrating: indian ink and pencil drawing, collage. In that way it is interesting both for the viewer and the author.
Friday, September 24th
11.00–14.00 Children’s programme at the Park Library
Vahur Afanasjev (24.08.1979–10.05.2021) (Estonia)
Vahur Afanasjev who unexpectedly died this spring has published seven poetry collections, five novels, a short story collection and a longer story; he has also written articles for several newspapers and magazines.
Afanajev’s work has won numerous prizes, among them his Tünsamäe tigu (The Snail of Tünsamäe) won the the Estonian Cultural Foundation award in 2015 and his novel Serafima ja Bogdan in 2018. In 2019 Afanasjev was nominated the Tartu City Writer. Beside literature, for him music had a special place. He often complemented his poetry either within his own projects or in collaboration with other musicians. He has also written lyrics for songs.
Vahur has left two manuscripts – a poetry collection Tuulevaiksed aastad (The Windless Years) and a novel Rail Baltic. Both will be introduced at the festival.
Thursday, September 23rd
Pavel Varunin (Estonia)
Pavel Varunin is a diversely talented man: an author, a graphic designer and icon painter; graphic artist and the author of several studies of the history and culture of the old believers. The first Paul Varunin’s book to be published was Родное слово детей староверов Эстонии (Old Believer Children’s Own Word, 2010). His best known book of fiction in the Russian community both at home and abroad seems to be Славка и страна Древлесловия (Slavka and the Land of Old Believers) published in 2018 which won Varunin the Estonian Cultural Foundation Prize for authors writing in Russian.
In addition to the books mentioned Pavel Varunin is well known as an author of fairy tales about a curious, clever, and very talkative fish called Riapusha or Rääbu (in Estonian). The hero of those books, liked both by children and adults, Rääbu, was born in Lake Peipsi and decided to get to know the world around it. Travelling in his company, the readers will get acquainted with the fish people of the lake and the people around the lake, their customs, way of life and history. There are three books in the series, all translated into Estonian from Russian by Peeter Volkonski: Rääbu. Peipsiveere muinasjutuveeretus (Rääbu. A Yarn from the Shores of Peipsi), Rääbu ja Valge Peipsimaa (Rääbu and the White Peipsiland), Rääbu ja Malmpea (Rääbu and the Cast Iron Head).
Varunin is the only technologist of woodcut blocks in Estonia. He started to make them in 2012 and these blocks are used to print textile in the workshop of the Peipsimaa Visiting Centre. In the period of 2012 – 2021 Pavel Varunin has made more than a hundred woodprint blocks. In Europe (including Russia and Estonia) three layered woodblocks with copper pressure pins were made until the beginning of the 20th century; today only a few masters know how to make them.
Friday, September 24th
13.00 Lubok print workshop with Pavel Varunin at the lobby hall of the University of Tartu Library
Igor Kotjuh (Estonia)
Igor Kotjuh is a poet, a publisher and an organizer of literary events. Born and studied in the town of Võru, he entered the University of Tartu as a student of Estonian language and literature. He defended his Master’s thesis in literary criticism at the University of Tallinn. Kotjuh is the charter member of the literary circle “Воздушный змей” (Tartu, 2003–2006), also the founder and editor of the literary house Kite and literary portal oblaka.ee.
He is the author of five poetry collections, three of which have won the prize of the Estonian Cultural Foundation for the best book in Russian, including the collection published in December 2020 The Isolation Tapes: Luuletused ja märkused (The Isolation Tapes. Poems and Remarks). His poems have been translated into 20 languages.
As Boris Baljasnyi has so fittingly said, the member of the Estonian Writers’ Union Igor Kotjuh is “the most Estonian of the Russian authors and the most Russian of the Estonian authors”. He writes both in Estonian and Russian, but in Estonia mostly in Estonian. At the Prima Vista festival Igor Kotjuh will read poems from his different collections and answer the questions of Timur Guzairov. He will also conduct several creative workshops titled Is it Easy to Write Poetry? This is the first of such complete and detailed performances of Igor Kotjuh in the past ten years.
Wednesday, September 22nd
Heidi Iivari (Finland)
Heidi Iivari is a poet and cultural manager of Finnish origin, but Tartu has now for 16 years been her hometown. Iivari has been performing her poetry since 2018, having participated at several events and festivals in Estonia, Finland and Spain. In 2020 she won the first prize in the finale of the Estonian poetry slam and represented Tartu at the Slam-O-Vision stage poetry contest of the UNESCO literary cities. Her poetry has been translated into English, Spanish and French and her texts can be read in Estonian and Finnish in the web anthology Viron runokartta and Sinisild/Sinisilta (2020).
Iivari’s first poetry collection, Tarton sarjarakastaja / Tartu sariarmastaja in Estonian and Finnish (Enostone Kustannus, 2021) has been dedicated to Tartu and everybody who loves Tartu. The characters of the collection meet passionately and painfully in the streets, bars, suburban paths or secret houses and gardens. Tartu is Iivari’s muse: a cheerful, serious, proud, and merry bohemian. The same spirit is also recognizable in Iivari’s poetry which range from city romantics to tragicomedy.
Watch also Iivari’s poetry videos:
Tartu Veenus (2020)/ Venus of Tartu
Tartu saiapood / Tarton pullanpuoti (2020) A Tartu Baker’s Shop
Meidän suvun miehet / Meie suguvõsa mehed / Men of our Family (2020)
The main theme of Prima Vista is ‘Small World’ this year . What do these words mean to you?
The title of a poem of mine is ‘Väike Tartu’ (Small Tartu) . The poem shows the small town in a slightly comic light where everybody seems to know everybody and where all people are connected. Is this stale pond homely or oppressive?
Tartu is such a homely pond, however, where water is never still as swimmers of different backgrounds and manner of thinking are all together in it. Part of the swimmers are the so-called ‘old fish’ , others come from still smaller waters, some fly here from the bigger world. Together, we make a various, ever changing and endlessly inspiring small world.
Friday, September 24th
Enn Kaup (Estonia)
Enn Kaup (b in 1946) is a polar explorer and ecologist who has been on ten Antarctic expeditions and also spent his time there with tourists. He is also the first man who hoisted the Estonian flag in Antarctica (1988) where he has spent more than a thousand days.
In his book Minu Antarktika (My Antarctica) he describes two expeditions (one in 1970, another in the 1990s) and a visit to Antarctica with tourists a couple of years ago. What are their differences, what links them?
In addition to Minu Antarktika Enn has written three more books about Antarctica: Nabakirjad (Navel Writings), Imekaunis Antarktika (Wonderful Antarctica) and Armulugu Antarktikaga (Love Story with Antarctica). He has also won an annual title of a travelogue writer.
Tuesday, September 21st
Eia Uus (Estonia)
Eia Uus was born in Noarootsi in 1985. Her first novel Kuu külm kuma (The Cold Light of the Moon), speaking of depression, won the Eduard Vilde Literary Prize and has been included in the reading list of many schools.
Her other books are a novel Kahe näoga jumal (The God with Two Faces, 2008), a travelogue Minu Prantsusmaa. Elu nagu sirelivein (My France. Life Like Lilac Wine, 2013), a novel Aasta Pariisis (A Year in Paris, 2014), a children’s book Seitsme maa ja mere taha (Behind the Seven Lands and Seas, 2019), and a novel Tüdrukune (Girlish, 2019), which won the third prize at the 2019 novel competition.
Eia Uus has also lived in Thailand, Canada, China, and Argentina. Her latest novel Kirju Buenos Airesest (Letters from Buenos Aires) has just been published.
Tuesday, September 21st
19.00 A literary night dedicated to travel books at the Fahrenheit 451° Book Room
Friday, September 24th
17.00 Literary night with Eia Uus at Tartu Public Library
Øyvind Rangøy (Norway)
The patron of the festival 2021 Øyvind Rangøy (b 1979) is a Norwegian poet and translator whose close connections with Estonia have played an important role in his life for a while. He learnt his first Estonian word at the age of 19, which was sisikond (intestines) and the word later became the title of his first poetry collection. Øyvind Rangøy spent his twenties mostly in Estonia, learning at the time Estonian and Fenno-Ugrian linguistics at the University of Tartu. After that he returned to Norway where he worked in the managing board of the fish industry and translated texts at the same time. He came back to Estonia to work as a lecturer at the University of Tartu.
In his own words, Øyvind writes of poetry and sea wrack in his poems, things that are – and things that were. His first encounter with poetry was in 2005 when he helped to translate Kristina Ehin’s poems and found poetry to be so wonderful and so foreign and so hard to understand as a phenomenon. Thus he became interested in the Norwegian poetry forum Diktkammeret where his first poem winning public attention appeared. The poem was of scaling salmon.
About 2011 when he had returned to Norway from Estonia, creative writing became more and more important for him. He started sharing his work in social media in addition to the forum. A chain of events starting at the seminar of translators of Estonian literature in Käsmu brought him in contact with Estonian poets and finally to publishing translations of Knut Ødegård’s poetry into Estonian. After that his own poetry debut Sisikond (Intestines) was published and a poetry collection titled Kolm sõlme (Three Knots) together with Veronika Kivisilla and Adam Cullen.
In 2020 Øyvind Rangøy’s autobiography Oled ikka veel see poiss: ühe lapsepõlve fragmendid (You Are Still That Boy: Fragments of a Childhood) was published speaking of small incidents of the author’s childhood on his home island Rangøy.
In this year Øyvind Rangøy has had a debut in his home country with a book in Norwegian. Regarding this, he speaks of himself as a Norwegian author but he likes to think of himself as a secret agent of Estonia in Norwegian literature. And what would be a better cover than being a Norwegian?
Tuesday, September 21st
Wednesday, September 22nd
16.00 A discussion The Diplomacy of Translating in the hall of Tartu Public Library
Participants: Turid Farbregd (Norway), Klara Hveberg (Norway), Knut Ødegård (Norway), andthe Norwegian ambassador Else Berit Eikeland. The discussion is moderated by Øyvind Rangøy.
Thursday, September 23rd
16.00 Night of Norwegian Poetry with Knut Ødegård and Øyvind Rangøy at Tartu Literature House
Friday, September 24th
Juhan Voolaid (Estonia)
Juhan Voolaid is the Tartu City Writer of 2021. Voolaid (b 1971) was born in Tartu and Tartu has the central place in his work, in fiction and memoirs as well as in art.
Voolaid’s youth was much associated with basketball; geography studies at the University of Tartu and administrative work at the Tartu city government followed, his main field of activity being environment. Voolaid started to make up stories in his early childhood, but his books started to reach the public only in 2010.
He has written in a number of genres, having published several short story collections (including Läbilööjalammas ja marukoer (The Brakethrough Sheep and the Mad Dog)), a children’s book, a collection of absurd and black humour Tuhastunud külavanem (Incinerated Village Elder), a novel titled Ideaalne taies (An Ideal Piece of Art) and a book of memoirs . Tartu 1971 – 1983 .Jõmpsika mälestused (Tartu 1971 – 1983 .Memoirs of a Brat).
Voolaid has also published a noteworthy series of Tartu suspense stories where history and the present are intermingled: Hokimängija Tartu linnamüüril (A Hockey Player on the Tartu Town Wall), 2014 and Tartu õuduskaupmees (The Tartu Horror Merchant), 2016.
Voolaid is also active in photography, having published a bilingual photo album Aastaraamis Tartu (A Year in Tartu), he has also exhibited his pictures, the most noteworthy of them being exhibitions titles Emajõe maalitud Tartu (Tartu Painted By River Emajõgi), Nihestatud Tartu (Dislocated Tartu) and Nihestatud Tartu 2 (Dislocated Tartu II).
Nihestatud Tartu 2 was exhibited on Kaarsild, a bridge over River Emajõgi at the Town Hall Square, within the events of the Prima Vista spring events programme. During the main programme in autumn, Juhan Voolaid will meet children in the art room of the Park Library and will walk with everybody who is interested along the medieval town wall. Juhan Voolaid will also participate in a talk with earlier City Writers.
Monday, September 20th
Wednesday, September 22nd
Thursday, September 23rd
11.00–14.00 Children’s programme at the Park Library
Rvīns Varde (Latvia)
Rvīns Varde (b 1985) is a Latvian writer, bird photographer and the anchorman of the TV show „Zaļgalvis“. He works as a transcriber for the Latvian journal Rīgas Laiks and says jokingly that he is good at anecdote telling and several other jobs.
Varde likes to collect other people’s thoughts and reminiscences and think about them. These people may be representatives of different cultural backgrounds, different ideas or different professions. All these experiences have doubtless left their trace and given him inspiration for creating his own texts. One of them is Varde’s debut book Kas te notiek (What’s Happening Here), for which he got the Annual Latvian Literature Award LALIGABA in 2020.
Varde has a good eye for details, his expression is vivid and thought provoking. At the same time, his texts are peculiarly entertaining.
Varde finds interest in everything. If you want to experience something exciting, Varde would advise you to keep your eyes wide open. Especially in the streets and in nature – in the streets you notice people, in nature you notice birds.
Estonian was the first foreign language Varde’s debut book was translated into, the translator was Ilze Tālberga.
The theme of this year’s festival is Small World. What does this phrase mean for you? Does your work relate to the theme? If yes, then how?
There is no such thing as a “big world”, everything is very small. You forgot to buy milk and ruin your coffee ritual – that is the whole world at that exact moment. Or when your tooth hurts – no other things exist. In my work I also use this focus, because there are no differences in how people recognize those small human things. Story you hear in a tram is a world and you are a small world too.
Friday, September 24th
18.30 Meeting with the Latvian author Rvīns Varde at the seminar room of Lodjakoda (Barge Harbour)
Knut Ødegård (Norway)
Knut Ødegård (b 1945) is a Norwegian poet, translator, promoter of literature and the most translated among the living Norwegian poets. His debut collection was published in 1967 and more than 50 books have been published since among which prose, children’s books and retold stories can be found in addition to poetry. Knut Ødegård is really a very often translated author: there are 42 translations of his works into foreign languages, among them a collection in Estonian Olin imiku nutt varisenud keldris (I Was an Infant Weeping in the Caved-In Cellar), published in 2018.
One finds lots of contrasts in Knut Ødegård’s poetry; he paints pictures of life both in its sincere simplicity and its deep abysses. There are no themes for him unfit for treatment and through the intensity of his perspective the reader can find beauty and darkness in very unexpected places. Among other things, the themes of Knut Ødegård’s poetry are faith, mental health and mysticism. In his texts, he often comes back to the childhood’s small world which may upon a closer view hide the secrets of the universe. In his poetry, he has described his childhood world as follows:
I was born at the sea. My mother bore me at the time of the great fishing season when the boats came at night with their lights swaying on the glowing sea, all full of fish: they came like beating hearts into my dreams. My father with his rigid handwriting and calculations, who went down the hill to the pier in the evening and came from the sea, buckets full of fish, when I was sleeping under the stars in my attic on the shores of an ocean.
Ødegård has studied theology and philology in Oslo and literature in Cambridge. He lives in Iceland and is a member of the Iceland Writers’ Union. In 1992 he founded the Bjørnson literary festival in his hometown Molde and is still recognized as the honorary president of the festival.
Wednesday, September 22nd
16.00 A discussion The Diplomacy of Translating in the hall of Tartu Public Library
Thursday, September 23rd
16.00 Night of Norwegian Poetry with Knut Ødegård and Øyvind Rangøy at Tartu Literature House
Klara Hveberg (Norway)
Klara Hveberg (b 1974) never planned to become a writer. She is a mathematician by education, and in her doctoral theses she studied fractals, which are complicated geometrical objects built up of smaller, distorted copies of themselves. But even before defending her thesis, she developed a postviral fatigue syndrome which eventually made it impossible for her to continue her work at the University of Oslo.
When she started writing, she was bedbound and could only write a few sentences each day – ending up with lots of small fragments that didn’t seem to fit together. Then she got the idea that she could try to use mathematics in a literary way: Fractals are also quite fragmented, but the fragments are connected through reflections and repetitions. Perhaps she could link her text fragments in a similar way? Gradually the fractal structure seemed to emerge naturally from the patterns of life, with everything that is repeated through history and generations.
In Hveberg’s first novel Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine (Lene din ensomhet langsomt mot min) we meet two female mathematicians, Rakel Havberg in our present time, and Sofya Kovalevskaya in the 19th century. Kovalevskaya was the first female professor of mathematics. Hveberg says that she was fascinated by Sofya’s personality — how she was both strong and vulnerable at the same time, both intelligent and naive. In mathematics it is important for Hveberg to present things in a simple and clear way, but in literature she enjoys to explore the more complex and ambiguous aspects of human nature.
The novel tells a story of love and loneliness, illness, mathematics, painting and music, and how art can help to define life anew when everything seems lost. Hveberg’s debut novel has already been published in Danish and Korean, and will soon be published in English, German and Polish.
What does the phrase Small world mean to you? And does your work relate to the theme?
My first thought is the exclamation «What a small world!» which we use when something very unlikely happens. But I also think of «small world» in contrast to «large world»: our small daily world of routines and tasks, family and friends, against the large world of politics, arts and science. Most of us live almost exclusively in the small world, but that small world is constantly being changed, challenged, and illuminated by the large world.
Rakel, the protagonist of my debut novel, lives in a very small world indeed – she has never mastered the art of making friends, and halfway through the novel she gets so sick that she has to spend most of the time in bed. What keeps her alive and sane is input from the large world; the ideas, impressions and emotions she gets from the worlds of literature, music – and mathematics. By chance («what a small world!») she discovers somebody she comes to think of as almost a twin in the Russian mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya – and her small world starts to expand to take in the cultural and scientific world of the nineteenth century. When Rakel begins to write, her guiding light is the mathematical notion of fractals which are built up of smaller copies of themselves – hence the small world contains a full copy of the large world!
I see art (including mathematics) as a way of connecting the large world with the small – a way of showing the significance of what we are experiencing and endowing it with meaning.
Wednesday, September 22nd
16.00 A discussion The Diplomacy of Translating in the hall of Tartu Public Library
Turid Farbregd (Norway)
Turid Farbregd (b 1941) is a Norwegian translator, cultural promoter, and estophile who celebrated her 80th birthday on the 8th of March this year. She has been having an irreplaceable role in the Estonian/Norwegian cultural relations and it is thanks to her that many Estonian high- ranking authors, such as Jaan Kross, Viivi Luik, Andrus Kivirähk, and several others have reached the Norwegian reader.
Turid Farbergd’s connection with Estonia was born in 1979 when she visited Tallinn as a member of the volley-ball team of the University of Helsinki and since that time the connection has only strengthened with years. In addition to translating, Farbregd has promoted the cultural connections between Norway and Estonia, compiling the Norwegian/Estonian and the Estonian/Norwegian dictionaries in collaboration with Ülle Viks and Sigrid Kangur.
Farbregd is a member of the Norwegian-Estonian Society and her contribution to publishing the Society’s journal Estlands-nytt is considerable. During the initial years of publishing the journal she wrote articles in it using various pseudonyms to avoid the funny impression her own name under the majority of articles would have created.
Thanks to such dedication and her sincere interest in the Estonian culture, the 100th anniversary of the Estonian/Norwegian diplomatic relations on the 5th of February certainly has a more special and deeper meaning.
Wednesday, September 22nd
16.00 A discussion The Diplomacy of Translating in the hall of Tartu Public Library
Etgar Keret (Israel)
Etgar Keret, born in 1967 in Tel Aviv is one of the most widely read and translated Israeli authors. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages and he has won many literary prizes both at home and abroad. Keret lives in Tel Aviv and works as a teacher of creative writing at the Ben Gurion University of Negev in the city of Be’er Sheva in Southern Israel. Short stories form the main part of Keret’s work but he has also written film and television scenarios, comics, plays, and children’s books and also produced films. Many of these works are in the high school programmes in Israel. Upon the motifs of his stories a number of short and anima films have been made. His film Jellyfish, made in collaboration with his wife Shira Geffen who is also an actor, won the prize of the best debut film at the Cannes film festival of 2007.
In 2019 his collection of short stories Missing Kissinger, translated into Estonian by Margus Alver, was published. In 1994 when the collection appeared in Israel, it caused a turn in literature. Keret used spoken language more than was traditional, mixing different registers, telling about the everyday happenings and sense of life of his people, often taking the events into the world of fantasy. This collection, partly satirical, with moments of black humour offers a good view into the turn of mind and life of the Israel people. In the opinion of many critics and literary historians Keret is the voice of his generation.
The interest of the Estonian readers in Keret’s stories was unexpectedly great; apparently both his black humour and fantasies were attractive to the public.
The pandemic has inspired Keret’s work in several ways; he has recently published new short stories and made a short film titled Outside – a Covid-19 fairytale together with Inbal Pinto, a choreographer.
The theme of this year’s festival is “Small World”. What does this phrase mean for you?
I can’t help feeling that our current world is becoming one huge village in which everyone watches Netflix, eats McDonalds & lives in their social media feed. This can be, depending on your mood, both beautiful & scary. See you all soon at the Instagram village’s square!
Thursday, September 23rd
18.00 Meeting with the Israeli writer Etgar Keret in the hall of Tartu Public Library