Lucy Popescu heads to Austria, and writes a special report for BookBlast® about European Literature Days which brings together writers from around the world to discuss current topics and stimulate debate. The festival has taken place in Krems on the River Danube since 2019.
The headline theme of this year’s sixteenth European Literature Days festival — curated by Austrian author Walter Grond, celebrated for his innovative narrative techniques and engagement with social and philosophical themes — was Divided World: Urban & Country Life, exploring the growing divide between urban and rural areas: “The urban elite is often faced with a rural population that sees its values and vested interests under threat and is struggling with the economic and cultural changes of our time”.
The opening night of the festival featured a conversation between Japanese-Czech architect and academic Osamu Okamura — born in Tokyo, now resident in Prague — author of A City for Everyone, and Rowan Moore, architecture critic for The Observer and the author of Property: The Myth that Built the World. They focused on London, Tokyo and Prague and explored the particular challenges that the cities currently face including the rising cost of residential property which is increasingly unaffordable for most people, as well as the high density of people wanting to live in urban spaces.
Moore spoke of the conflict between the interests of cities needing to expand and the country, where many residents don’t want anything built near them or their green fields. He noted that many people accept poor quality and precarious living conditions and that the high cost of property is corrupting as too much is seen through the prism of property values. He advocated remote working so that people could live further away which would reduce the pressure of over development in cities like London.
Okamura spoke about how Tokyo is on the brink of change with an ageing population. Urban plans focus on smart shrinking [1] while property values are starting to decrease on the outskirts of the city. The Japanese prefer to train robots to take care of elderly people rather than use immigrant workers. He observed that in Europe many towns are also facing shrinkage. People are leaving because it is no longer attractive, safe, functional or healthy to work there.
Prague is over developed and over populated and suffers from a lack of affordable housing, whereas Krems was built by people who have lived here for centuries so it better reflects its community and their needs. Okamura believes sustainability is easier in cities, because people who live in the country often have a higher carbon footprint connected to the need for heating, transport, distances travelled and so on.
On day two, Sarah Langford, a former barrister, farmer and author of Rooted: How regenerative farming can change the world, was in conversation with Rowan Moore. Langford’s book explores the problems in agriculture caused by climate change and Brexit. She described how she was a mother of two small children living in London, when her husband lost his job and they sought refuge in the Suffolk countryside. Langford had thought they would stay for six months, but they decided to acquire some arable and pasture land during a time of enormous change in farming, because of Brexit. She referred to articles which she read at the time that blamed farmers for a variety of ecological catastrophes. Her book is about developing a healthy relationship with the land, and how to feel rooted in a place where you didn’t grow up. Originally subtitled: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution, this was changed to reflect how everyone now appears to be moving towards regenerative farming. Langford noted that there is a disconnect between those who create food and those who consume food and, consequently, most of us feel cut off from the land.
Moore grew up in Sussex, next to a farm until he was six. He remembered taking a bucket to the milk shed on the farm to buy milk. Having lived all his adult life in London, he has transferred his attachment to the city where he feels he now belongs. He took up architecture but discovered that he was better at writing on the subject than practicing it. He is interested in how architects shape and respond to society and how we live today. Moore described living in a property-owning democracy and the idea, cultivated by Margaret Thatcher, that if everyone owns property they will be better off, and better subjects of the nation because they have a stake in the economy. Thatcher encouraged the ‘right to buy’ government housing at a discounted rate and deregulated the mortgage market so it was easier to buy property which inevitably caused prices to rapidly increase. The policy of home ownership has been taken on by successive governments and house price inflation is seen as a good thing. It has helped the economy, because home owners can borrow against the theoretical value of their homes. But there is a price to be paid and younger people are increasingly excluded from getting on to the property ladder. There is now a major divide between those who own and those who don’t. Moore believes Thatcher’s contention that it makes you a better citizen is no longer true and that people have become less public spirited.
Langford touched on the sentimental ideas surrounding the English country side and the myths that have developed around it. She compared the writing of a poet like William Wordsworth to Cumbrian farmer James Rebanks who illustrates the hard graft of farming and emphasise that it is dirty, smelly and unromantic. Langford observed that farming is full of risk with little financial reward. There is currently a big push towards direct selling aided by improved connectivity, tech and the use of mobile abattoirs.
The discussion which followed on later was led by German Dr. Roman Köster, an historian at the Universität der Bundeswehr München, who introduced us to his book Müll: Eine schmutzige Geschichte der Menschheitl, (Rubbish: A Dirty History of Humanity) which explores the worldwide history of rubbish from the first human settlement to the present day. Köster has identified three epochs of global waste. Even pre-industrial societies had landfill sites, and industrialisation ushered in a substantial increase in waste; after the Second World War, the growth of supermarkets and food packaging became a major problem. This still accounts for the majority of household waste in our time of mass consumption. He emphasizes that while waste has always been a part of human societies, the scale and complexity of modern waste problems require innovative solutions. The identification of toxic ingredients that cause cancer continues to proliferate and urban hygiene has become increasingly important. Köster has written a fascinating study and Müll must find an English publisher.
Danish sociologist, Nikolaj Schultz, research fellow at the University of Copenhagen, spoke about Land Sickness (Polity Books, 2023) originally written in English and widely translated. A philosophical treatise on living in the Anthropocene, he describes the work as an ‘ethnografictive’ essay. Based on his own experiences, part-novel, part-allegory and part-travelogue, it is a profound meditation on the climate crisis. His narrator’s various anxieties cause a form of ‘land sickness’. Using this metaphor borrowed from nautical language, Schultz explained, he wanted the title to represent the dual shaking of the planet and the human.
In a far-ranging discussion, Schultz spoke about his grandmother and her generation, who realise that they have contributed to the destabilisation of planet earth, and are beginning to recognise what it means for the younger generation: that everything they fought for — freedom, growth, development — is what has trapped their grandchildren on an unhabitable planet. Schultz’s aim was to find a language for the climate grief and eco-anxiety his generation feels, the ethics and confusions which are all indications of something deeper: what it means to be human today. This short, sharp shock of a book serves as a powerful call to recognise our personal responsibility for global warming and our destruction of the planet.
Anne Weber, a German author and translator based in Paris, alternately writes books in German and French. She has won numerous awards, including the German Book Prize. She is published in the UK by Indigo Press: Epic Annette: A Heroine’s Tale (translated by Tess Lewis and published in 2024) is the true story of Annette Beaumanoir, a medical student living in a world at war who, at nineteen years old, joined the French Resistance and saved the lives of two Jewish children in Paris. To get a taste of Weber’s work you can read an exclusive essay, The land of in-between, translated by Lewis, published by Indigo online HERE. Her next work, Sanderling, to be published in English translation by Neil Blackadder (November 2025) is a biography of her great grand-father Florens Christian Rang (1864-1924). Rang was a Protestant pastor stationed near Poznań in modern-day Poland, then part of Prussia. The church, which he subsequently abandoned, had a mission to ‘Germanise’ the local population. Weber draws parallels between this apparently benign ambition and the subsequent murderous impulses of the third Reich. Rang’s son — Weber’s grandfather — became a Nazi. With literary and philosophical references including Sontag, Sebald and Nietzsche, Weber combines her family history with a broader examination of ethics and morality. She spoke about and read from her novel Bannmeilen (Suburbs), published in German in 2024, inspired by walking around the banlieues of Paris with her old friend Thierry, a Frenchman with Algerian roots, who grew up there.
Brazilian writer and playwright Patrícia Melo is also an Indigo Press author. Her novel The Simple Art of Killing a Woman, translated by Sophie Lewis, is about femicide in Brazil. Her books often explore the criminal underworld and have been praised for their social and political relevance. Melo read from Die Stadt der Anderen (The City of Others) published in German this year.
BUY The Simple Art of Killing a Woman
Other speakers included Christoph Peters, Lisz Hirn, Joanna Bator, Laurent Mauvignier (published by Fitzcarraldo) and Alina Herbing.
One of the highlights of the festival is the Austrian Book Trade Honorary Award for Tolerance in Thought and Action which was awarded to author and peace activist David Grossman.
In his acceptance speech he observed that to act in a tolerant way goes against our nature, against what our urges and instincts tell us. He told an anecdote about the first time he heard about art. He was a child on a bus and there was an interview with the polish American pianist Arthur Rubenstein who claimed he was a happy person because “I am an artist”. Grossman describes how the word “happy” fell into the bus like a golden coin. “Artists have to be accurate, precise and nuanced,” he said. “When I finish writing a paragraph, suddenly there is this musicality and I understand this way of “Being” in the world and what a gift artists have to be able to reach a place where musicality is composed.”
Grossman touched on the October 7th Attack, how it had paralysed him, as well as his fears that Israel is losing its democratic values to fundamentalism and religious nationalism. He spoke about the death of his son Uri in 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, and how he had been given books about bereavement and yet they did not express what he felt. “If I want to know what I feel, I have to write it down.” At first he was unable to write about his son in the past tense, but he forced himself to be absorbed by his pain and create his own space of bereavement. Slowly, he began writing again and realised that he was coming slowly back to life. Writing was a solace and a form of survival. Now, he concluded, he is writing poetry because he can’t write novels.
It was a poignant end to a literary festival that every year explores topical issues, addresses urgent concerns and celebrates an international exchange of ideas in a wide-ranging programme of debates, book discussions, readings, and musical-literary soirées.
[1] Smart shrinking refers to urban planning strategies designed to manage population decline and economic contraction in a sustainable way. Instead of striving for growth, these plans aim to make cities more livable and efficient with fewer resources and a smaller population.
Lucy Popescu is a writer, editor and arts critic with a background in human rights. She worked with the English Centre of PEN, the international association of writers, for over 20 years and was Director of its Writers in Prison Committee from 1991 to 2006. She is currently chair of the Authors’ Club.
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