Skopje, 30 September 2024 (MIA) — The tenth BookStar European Literature Festival begins Monday under the slogan 'Metamorphosis' and will, for the first time, award a prize for exceptional literary achievements, BookStar X10. This year's winner is Italian writer Alessandro Barrico, whose latest book, "Abel," will soon be released in Macedonian.

"Considering that his travel abroad has been reduced to a minimum these four or five years, the BookStar festival has the honor of his exclusive online participation," organizers said in a press release.

Icelandic author Jón Kalman Stefánsson will receive the festival's already established BookStar 2024 award, for his "Heaven and Hell" trilogy.

Organized by Antolog publishing house, the festival will run through Oct. 3 and host conversations with authors, book launches, panels, workshops, readings, music performances, an exhibition, a stand-up show, and the second "Publishing Europe" convention.

This year's festival slogan, 'Metamorphosis,' was inspired by Franz Kafka. A "Reading and Translating Kafka" panel will be held in his honor, organizers said.

The first festival day will offer a creative workshop with Ana Golejshka-Dzhikova and two podcast interviews by Dushko Krstevski with José Luís Peixoto from Portugal and Zdravka Evtimova from Bulgaria.

Macedonian writer Rumena Bužarovska will speak at the official opening Monday evening, followed by a panel on trauma and perseverance in literature with Paola Peretti and Miřenka Čechová.

Other festival attendees include Kristian Novak from Croatia, Igor Marojevic from Serbia, Faruk Sehic from Bosnia as well as some 40 Macedonian writers, literary critics, musicians, publishers and translators. One of them will be Benjamin Langer, this year's winner of the international Dragi prize for translating "The Weeds" by Petre M. Andreevski from the Macedonian to German.

BookStar organizers will announce the award winner for the best translation into Macedonian during the festival. Five translators made the shortlist for the award named after Macedonian translator Dragi Mihajlovski.

They are Anastasija Gjurchinova for her translation of "The Intimate Life" by Niccolò Amaniti (Antolog, 2024); Gjoko Zdraveski for "Three for Kartal" by Miljenko Jergovic (Begemot, 2024); Ekaterina Babamova for "Victory City" by Salman Rushdie (Artkonekt, 2023); Elisaveta Popovska for "A Girl's Story" by Annie Ernaux (Ilika, 2024); and Irena Jurcheva for "The Silmarillion" by J. R. R. Tolkien (Pablisher, 2023).

The festival events will be held at various Skopje venues, including Laboratorium, the Faculty of Philology, Miladinov Brothers City Library, and Europe House.

BookStar 2024 is organized with support from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Traduki literary network, the EU Delegation, the Embassies of Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic, the Cultural Information Center of Bulgaria in Skopje, Belgrade's Italian Institute of Culture, the Icelandic Literary Center, and Camões Institute for Cooperation and Language. mr/