The writer Magdalena TULLI will be participating in the grand international festival Passa Porta. She will be in conversation with the philosopher Alicja GESCINSKA about the author’s vision of the world, focusing in particular on the social topic of migration. 
The event will take place in English.  

The Passa Porta Festival is “the event that no book lover wants to miss: every two years, it invades Brussels. Over the course of a weekend, from 24 to 26 March, more than a hundred Belgian and international writers, whether established authors or new voices, come together to share ideas and their passion for literature in cafés, theaters, bookshops, libraries and other public spaces.”
+++ Find out more on www.passaportafestival.be/en  

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
>>> Beursschouwburg, Zilveren zaal (Rue Auguste Orts 20-28, 1000 Brussels) – see map 
>>> Sunday 26 March 2017 – 13:30>14:30 
>>> pass parcours Sunday: €15 | €12 (-26, 65+, unemployed)
this pass allows you to get in all audiences on that day!
>>> parcours weekendpass: €25 | €10 (-26, 65+, unemployed)
BOOK YOUR TICKET

Magdalena TULLI was born into a Polish-Italian family in 1955. A resident of Warsaw, she works as a writer and translator from French and Italian (Marcel Proust, Italo Calvino, Fleur Jaeggy). Her first novel, entitled Sny i kamienie and published in1995, was called ‘antiprose’ by the Krakow Book Institute, insofar as it is not the place or action of the novel which stands out but rather the process of general disorganisation, transience, degradation and the suffering which is part and parcel of the world which is described in its pages. It was in this vein that she published her next works: W Cierwieni in 1998 (W.A.B., Warsaw, translated under the title Dans le rouge by Laurence Dyèvre) followed by Tryby in 2003 (W.A.B., Warsaw). The first of these novels received the prestigious Kościelski foundation prize, whilst the next two netted her nominations for the greatest Polish literary prize, the NIKE prize. Her subsequent works also received important prizes.
Her novel Skaza (W.A.B, Warsaw, 2006, translated into English as Flaw by Bill Johnston) introduced characters who are refugees struggling with an unfathomable reality. They will form part of the discussion with Alicja GESCINSKA. 

BIBLIOGRAPHIE
Sny i kamienie (wyd. Open, Varsovie, 1995) – Dreams and Stones (Archipelago Books, New York, 2004, translation by Bill Johnston)
W czerwieni (W.A.B., Varsovie, 1998)
Tryby (W.A.B., Varsovie, 2003) – Moving parts (Archipelago Books, New York, 2005, translation by Bill Johnston)
Skaza (W.A.B., Varsovie, 2006) – Flaw (Archipelago Books, New York, 2007, translation by Bill Johnston)
Włoskie szpilki (Nisza, Varsovie, 2011)
Szum (Znak, Cracovie, 2014)

Alicja GESCINSKA arrived in Belgium with her parents as the communist bloc was disintegrating. The holder of a doctorate in philisophy, she achieved success with a wide audience with her book De verovering van de vrijheid (‘The Conquest of Freedom’), in which she makes a philosophical plea for more positive freedom and which assured her place in the circle of the most influential young Dutch-speaking intellectuals. The author of humourous dispatches and columns for various newspapers and periodicals, she published her first novel in February 2016, Een soort van liefde. After three years spent in the United States teaching Political Science at Amherst College, she returned to Flanders where she achieved media notoriety with her programme Wanderlust (Canvas, September-October 2016), which consisted of discussions with philosophers, artists, writers and scientists.
Whilst Krzysztof PENDERECKI was in Brussels in December 2016, Gescinska interviewed the maestro for the newspaper De Standaard.