9th Literary Sopot
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This year’s edition of the Literary Sopot Festival finds us all at an extremely difficult time. We are witnessing the slow death of the planet, real wars and those caused by paid Internet trolls We hurt and are being hurt. How does our choice of Canada as the festival’s guest of honor fit into this context? When thinking about Canada, we wanted to tear through the set of standard stereotypes we operate in Poland about the country. Through literature, we wanted to touch on both the most painful experiences of Canadians and describe their achievements in such important fields as the media and climate protection. To begin with, we want to give the floor to Canada’s First Nations. The debate, featuring Joanna Onoszko-Gierak, Monika Płatek, Tanya Talaga, Steven Cooper, is intended to introduce the Polish audience to the scale of the problem, the long-standing abuses perpetrated against indigenous peoples, by the Canadian state. How Canada is dealing with guilt and how it is looking for solutions to ensure that future situations do not happen again. Among other things, this is what we want to talk about. In the next “Anthropocene” debate, we will talk with scientists and artists about the unimaginable scale of devastation that planet Earth has undergone over the decades. Thoughtless and gigantic-scale human actions have led to a situation in which we have to contend with climate change, natural disasters, mass migrations. But does man’s barbaric activity refer only to the sphere of his physical actions towards nature and other people? Is the 21st century, the age of free flow of information, just a time of a giant leap in technology, a time of bringing people closer together? Or is this an age in which, with the help of electronic media, many irresponsible people manage people’s imagination, shape the choices of entire societies, and cause conflicts on an unprecedented scale? About all of this in the debate entitled “The world. “Marschall McLuhan in the World of Algorithms” will be spoken by Andrew McLuhan grandson of the famous researcher, Derrick de Kerckhove his last assistant, Professor. Anna Nacher of Jagiellonian University and Miroslaw Filiciak of SWPS University. The relationship between Newfoundland’s indigenous Beothuk people and European settlers is also alluded to in our guest Michael Crummey’s debut novel River of Thieves. His latest book The Innocents, the Polish translation of which will be premiered at the festival, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. |
Another Canadian guest at the festival will be Patrick deWitt author known for his work, among other things. from the Canadian Literary Association Award-winning and Booker-nominated book The Sisters Brothers, which was filmed by Jacqua Audiard. David Szalay is the author of award-winning novels, including What is Man, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His latest book Turbulence will have its Polish premiere in August. There will be no shortage of women writers at the festival. Their position in the world of Canadian literature is unassailable. Madelaine Thien charmed with her book Don’t Say We Have Nothing by Alice Munroe herself. For this novel, Thien won the Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The young author with Chinese-Malaysian roots is recognized in Canada as the most promising writer of the younger generation. And finally, Esi Edugyan, a two-time Giller Prize-winning author, one of her novels Half-Blood Blues also won a Man Booker Prize nomination. Washington Black‘s Giller Prize-winning book will have its Polish premiere during the festival. Joanna Cichocka-Gula  |