Thousands of people try to make their way through the large halls of Lviv's Palace of Arts. On only the second day of the Lviv International Book forum, many of them already carry heavy bags with lots of books.
“I am a great, great book lover, the forum is a big holiday for me,”
says Yulia Levis, a second-year university student from Lviv. Her eyes light up
as she spots famous writer Yuriy Andruhovych passing by. “Was that Andruhovych?”
a middle-aged man shouts and runs after the writer.
As well as most of the Book Forum participants, Levis leaves time for music
and poetry nights and, of course, autograph sessions of popular authors. Levis
comes to the forum annually and says that she reads everything from classic to
scientific literature, but bought mostly books of modern Ukrainian authors,
including Liuko Dashvar, Serhiy Zhadan, Yuriy Vynnychuk.
All of them and many others enjoy their moments of glory here pretty
much all the time. “I am not answering these questions about forum for the 68th
time,” Ukrainian popular author Yuriy Vynnychuk shouts at a group of
journalists who approach him after his
autograph session and turns to go the opposite direction, while his colleague
Andriy Kurkov, the author of popular detective stories, is giving interviews to
five TV channels simultaneously and keeps signing books.
Ukrainian authors are not the Book Forum’s only treat. Legendary writers
from all over the world are part of the program, too. This year’s stars are English
children writer Jeremy Strong, one of Russia’s bestselling authors Tatyana
Tolstaya and famous Polish writer Janusz Leon Wisniewski.
This year’s Book Forum, held for the 20th time, is the first
to have a country as a partner. This year it is Poland, but organizers promise
more to come. “We are very happy with
cooperation with Poland. Polish program included more than four dozen special
events and we have a couple of country-partnership offers for the next forum
already,” Lviv Book Forum president Oleksandra Koval said at the opening
ceremony. She promised to keep the next year’s partner in secret, but then
revealed that it would be Austria.
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
