Two Nobel literature prize winners come to Romanian festival

Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, and Gao Xingjian, the 2000 winner of the same distinction, will be among the guests of this year’s Iasi International Festival of Literature and Translation (FILIT), taking place between October 4 and October 8. The festival is adding this year three new programs, dedicated to fantasy and children literature, and one rolled out in a partnership with the Iasi branch of the Romanian Writers Union (USR), the organizers said. Ukrainian-born Alexievich currently resides in Minsk, Belarus. Her work has been translated into 45 languages and published in 47 countries so far. Her books have been the basis for numerous plays and documentary films. Some of her best known novels are War’s Unwomanly Face, Zinky Boys: The Record of a Lost Soviet Generation, and Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese-born writer to win the Nobel for literature, for "an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity," according to the jury’s motivation. He is the author of such novels as Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible, and of the plays Bus Stop and The Other Shore, which were banned in China. In 1987 he first travelled to France, where he was granted citizenship in 1998 after seeking political asylum. The program of the festival is being updated here. editor@romania-insider.com