Lviv BookForum 2024

Since gaining independence, Ukraine has been undergoing a challenging path of democratic transformation. Since February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian people have shown an unprecedented strength of resistance, resilience, and determination. What role does civil society play in these processes, and what kind of collective action do we lack at this stage?

Those problematic issues will be discussed by: Alim Aliev, Deputy General Director of the Ukrainian Institute and Board Member of the International Renaissance Foundation; Serhiy Zhadan, writer, musician, translator, volunteer, who joined the ranks of the 13th brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard Khartia; Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta, Director of the National Art and Culture Museum Complex Mystetskyi Arsenal; Inna Pidluska, Deputy Executive Director of the International Renaissance Foundation. Moderator: Radoslava Kabachiy, Social Capital Program Manager at the International Renaissance Foundation.

Serhiy Zhadan and Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta will join the event digitally

What drives people to engage with each other during wartime? How and why does war paralyze society's will to resist? Is war a sentence or a challenge that demands action? The discussion will focus on the key experiences of the Russian-Ukrainian war, its global context, and the main dangers and challenges of the post-war future.
Marichka Paplauskaite is an Ukrainian reporter, media manager. Co-founder of The Ukrainians Media, editor-in-chief of the online magazine Reporters, author of the reportage books God of Amazing People and Other Sinners and The Train Arrives on Schedule. Wojciech Tochman is a polish reporter, Co-founder of the reporter's bookstore-café and publishing house Wrzenie Świata in Warsaw, author of 10 reportage books, including the post-genocide trilogy Like Eating a Stone, Today We`ll Draw Death, and Roosters Crow, Dogs Cry; Jurko Prokhasko is a literary scholar, psychoanalyst, essayist, publicist and translator. Corresponding member of the Saxon Academy of Arts (Dresden), Co-founder and lecturer at the Lviv Psychoanalytic Institute and Member of PEN Ukraine. They talk with the Ukrainian reporter, Vira Kuryko, author of documentary books The Street of the Involved. Chernihiv Case of Lukyanenko, Mazepa. The Right to the Sword or A Healthy Person's Reform. Writes for Reporters, Local History, and a number of Ukrainian and foreign publications.

Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov's novel Time Shelter, winner of the International Booker Prize 2023, follows an unnamed narrator and Gaustine, a psychiatrist who creates a clinic for people with Alzheimer's disease in Zürich. Each floor of the clinic recreates a decade in intricate detail, aiming to transport patients back in time to revisit their memories. Tasked with collecting past artefacts for the clinic, the narrator travels across countries. Soon, healthy people turn to the clinic to flee their monotonous lives and the idea becomes widespread when more clinics open. Referenda are held across Europe to decide which past decade each country should inhabit in the future. Gospodinov talks to the book's translator and author of The Dictionary of War Ostap Slyvynsky. In converstion with Vadym Karpiak.

Georgi Gospodinov will join the event digitally.

A reflection on how the world was affected in the 1990s by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the declaration of independence of Ukraine and countries of the former Warsaw Pact. The decade was a time of hope and change. Vladimir Arsenijević is a Serbian novelist, translator and musician; Oliver Bullough is a British investigative journalist; Viv Groskop is a British writer and comedian; Sofi Oksanen is a Finnish writer and playwright; Iryna Tsilyk is a filmmaker and writer, winner of the 2020 Sundance director award. They talk to Olha Mukha.

Vladimir Arsenijević, Oliver Bullough and Sofi Oksanen will join the event digitally.

Conversation around Salman Rushdie's newest book The Knife. On the morning of 12 August, 2022, Salman Rushdie was on stage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a masked man rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought was: "So it’s you. Here you are". What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. In his book The Knife, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide. The Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, gravity, and unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again. Chaired by writer, art curator and member of PEN Ukraine Oleksandr Mykhed.

Salman Rushdie will join the event digitally.

The work of Myroslav Shkandrij, professor emeritus at the Department of German and Slavic Studies, University of Manitoba, and author of Revolutionary Ukraine, 1917-2017: Flashpoints in History and Contemporary Memory Wars, prompted Ukrainians to reflect on serfdom as a form of slavery that existed in Ukrainian territory. Terrell Jermaine Starr is an American journalist and activist who writes about Ukraine, foreign policy and race. Chaired by Bohdana Romantsova, editor at Tempora Publishing House.