Watch, Listen, Read: Winternachten 2010
VPRO's OVT Live
Winternachten 2010
This year too VPRO's history programme OVT ends the festival in a live broadcast from café Dudok. The Surinamese writer Theo Para is a guest to talk about his book De Schreeuw van Bastion Veere (The Cry of Bastion Veere) , dealing with the history …
read moreCynthia Mc Leod, Gert Oostindie, Gilbert Wawoe, John Jansen van Galen, Mathijs Deen, Nelleke Noordervliet, Paul van der Gaag, Sams, Theo Para
Readers' Club Live: Kafka!
Winternachten 2010
A man wakes up as an enormous insect, a circus artist fasts until death, a hangman demonstrates a new torture machine, a son has his father sentence him to death by drowning. The stories of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) are often absurd, but they are …
read moreBas Heijne, Elsbeth Etty, Naema Tahir, Pieter Steinz
How to Bluff Your Way into Saba, Statia and Bonaire
Winternachten 2010
A crash course in the new Dutch municipalities! A few months still to go and our country obtains three Caribbean islands: Saba, St Eustatius and Bonaire. Be prepared and be informed on the language, literature and history of these tropical islands, …
read moreBòi Antoin, Gilbert Wawoe, Paulette Smit, Ruben Severina, Sams, Wycliffe Smith
In search of the Golden Rule III
Winternachten 2010
What if you have to work in a country that puts you under all kinds of legal restrictions? Shahriar Mandanipour, expelled from Iran, wrote about the censorship that he had to deal with as a writer. Xue Xinran worked as a radio journalist in China …
read moreMarkha Valenta, Raoul Heertje, Shahriar Mandanipour, Wolter Wierbos, Xue Xinran
Indonesia, country of outsiders
Winternachten 2010
The Malaysian writer Tash Aw and the Indonesian journalist Andreas Harsono talk about Indonesia as a country of purely outsiders. The characters in Aw's latest novel, Map of the Invisible World , all belong in Indonesia, while being outsiders at …
read moreAndreas Harsono, Paul van der Gaag, Tash Aw
I speak your language
Winternachten 2010
The new generation of poets Ronelda Kamfer (South Africa), Alfred Schaffer (Aruba/the Netherlands) a nd Hagar Peeters (the Netherlands) recite from their work and talk to Stephan Sanders about their language and poetry. Ronelda Kamfer writes in …
read moreAlfred Schaffer, Hagar Peeters, Ronelda S. Kamfer, Stephan Sanders
In search of the Golden Rule II
Winternachten 2010
Is there such a thing a A Golden Social Rule to connect people of different cultures? Indian writer Tarun Tejpal and Dutch writer Bas Heijne try to find it. Which rules have become obsolete because of the worldwide economic crisis and the change of …
read moreBas Heijne, Markha Valenta, Raoul Heertje, Tarun Tejpal, Wolter Wierbos
The tone and the Music
Winternachten 2010
The Lebanese Iman Humaydan is a sociologist, writer, journalist, conservationist and human rights activist. In her novels there is not much explicit that reminds one of her activism. Her commitment is packed in stories about people trying to save …
read moreGustaaf Peek, Hassnae Bouazza, Iman Humaydan
Rules or Confusion?
Winternachten 2010
'The message is that you need borders and restrictions the experience freedom'. These are words of Jonathan Safran Foer (US) in a recent interview in a Dutch weekly. Foer, who opens the evening on rules and disorder, is like no other able to bring a …
read moreJonathan Safran Foer, Wim Brands
The need for chaos
Winternachten 2010
Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe/Switzerland) and Vamba Sherif (the Netherlands/Liberia) both live in a very much regulated society, but write about chaotic and deregulated societies. Joris Luyendijk talks to them about the question whether chaos and …
read moreJoris Luyendijk, Petina Gappah, Vamba Sherif
Wintercafe 3: New Etiquettes, please!
Winternachten 2010
It is back again! Etiquette! As if it had never gone. The shops offer us a wide range of books that answer questions on how to pick up or put down your fork or knife, how to court a person, and when to sit down or stand up. Etiquette expert Beatrijs …
read moreBeatrijs Ritsema, Esma Abouzahra, Iman Humaydan, Joshua Samson, Maarten Ornstein, Sanna Andréa-Dia
Decisive rules
Winternachten 2010
Whether literature offers solace or confusion, whether it shows the way or disorders, every writer must have been moved in the course of his or her life by a passage, a line, an image or a poem which gave direction to his or her life. Was it a boys' …
read moreJoke van Leeuwen, Jonathan Safran Foer, Petina Gappah, Ramsey Nasr, Shahriar Mandanipour, Tash Aw, Wim Brands
Winternachten Lecture
Winternachten 2010
The question seemed as simple as far-reaching: if you were to rewrite the rules of the U niversal Declaration of Human Rights , from a South African perspective, would the result resemble the original? Or would something completely …
read moreAlexander Rinnooy Kan, Antjie Krog, Fouad Laroui, Mehmet Polat, Tarun Tejpal, Xue Xinran
Love's Golden Rules
Winternachten 2010
At the end of the evening writers Ramsey Nasr and Marja Pruis will go in search of Love's Golden Rules in the grote zaal. What are the most important and sincerest rules in love? And who has written about it in the most beautiful terms? Writing …
read moreMarja Pruis, Ramsey Nasr, Raoul Heertje, Wolter Wierbos
In search for the Golden Rule I: the Dutch and rules
Winternachten 2010
In the search for the Golden Rule the first question that comes up is: what is our relationship with rules? In 1962 teenager Gerard Spong came from Surinam to the Netherlands. It was the beginning of a decade in which our country would change deeply …
read moreBas Heijne, Gerard Spong, Raoul Heertje, Wolter Wierbos
Wintercafé 3: Istanbul and the Cosmopolitan Future
Winternachten 2010
Where borders disappear, people draw new lines. Cosmopolitan cities, where many different people and cultures meet, give fertile ground to new artistic twilight zones. In an exchange programme between Amsterdam, Antwerp and Istanbul, writers look …
read moreFatos Ipek-Demir, Hylke, Seray Şahiner, Soundos, Uğur Ziya Şimşek, Unom
An Ode to Haiti
Winternachten 2010
The heavy erathquake in Haiti, some days before the festival, had its consequences for the programme. The announced author Kettly Mars from Haiti was not hurt, but was not able to leave the island. Apart from that, Junot Diaz, the other announced …
read moreLinda Polman, Lucia Nankoe, Maikel van Hetten, Sandew Hira
The limits of chaos
Winternachten 2010
Sometimes it seems that art comes into being primarily where order has been removed. But maybe even the most disorganising artist needs footing. With his music cellist Ernst Reijsiger skims along the limits of what his instrument has to offer in …
read moreErnst Reijseger, Jan Donkers, Ramsey Nasr
Zeeman's zealousness
Winternachten 2010
On 27 July 2009 Michaël Zeeman died. He was only 50. His love of books and literature were unequalled. Books were his friends, his relatives, his loves. As a host Zeeman was attached to Winternachten for thirteen years. His death is not only a great …
read moreAntjie Krog, Bas Heijne, Frans Timmermans, Maxim Februari
Wintercafé 1: Godless in Morocco
Winternachten 2010
A programme on rule breaking heart and soul: Berber writer Mohamed Choukri from Morocco. In his autobiographical novel For Bread Alone (1973) he wrote about everything God had forbidden; his youth as a vagabond in Tangier, where he survived in a …
read moreAli Amazigh, Asis Aynan, Hylke, Mohammed Benzakour, Naima Albdiouni, Soundos, Unom
Wintercafé 2: Who is afraid of Youth?
Winternachten 2010
Pupils of two secondary schools in The Hague climb the stage and recite poems they've written. In the last few months poet Els Moors came to their classes and read poetry with them. Tonight Moors reads with pupils from the Rijswijks Lyceum and …
read moreEls Moors, Hylke, Soundos, Unom
Wintercafé 4: Rules for Radicals 2.0
Winternachten 2010
Nowadays, where does an angry artist leave his rage and criticism? In 'Rules for Radicals' we search for a pragmatic manual for the making of harmful literature, street noise and bombs for the national canon. Which are the new strategies for today's …
read moreChris Keulemans, Het Verbond Tegen De Liefde, Hylke, Saskia De Coster, Soundos
Wintercafé 1: Who's Afraid of Youth
Winternachten 2010
This first our in the Wintercafé starts with a performance by saxophone player and composer Maarten Ornstein and Joshua Samson (percussion). Ornstein composed music to poetry that he read, but never heard. In the first of a series of three performan…
read moreErik Lindner, Joshua Samson, Maarten Ornstein, Sanna Andréa-Dia
Wintercafé 2: Hold on! Oulipo.
Winternachten 2010
Hold on! Oulipo and the literary restriction: If you play the game, you make the rules. The French OuLiPo company (Ouvroir Littéraire Potentielle, founded in 1960) thought that with self-imposed literary restrictions one could write potentially …
read moreAnton Valens, Hugo Brandt Corstius, Joke van Leeuwen, Joshua Samson, Karin Amatmoekrim, Maarten Ornstein, Ronelda S. Kamfer, Sanna Andréa-Dia, Saskia De Coster
Wintercafé 4: Dutch Corals
Winternachten 2010
At the end of the evening, before you go to sleep, it is good and comforting to hear stories. Two authors - Wycliffe Smith and Bòi Antoin - from two new municipalities of The Netherlands, the Carribean islands of Bonaire and Saba, will tell you …
read moreBòi Antoin, Sanna Andréa-Dia, Wycliffe Smith
Big Brother visiting
Winternachten 2010
Christine Otten and Antjie Krog had disorder literally hovering on their doorstep. They discovered that independently of each other they had written books with an almost identical scene, a police raid on their homes. Both raids took place on …
read moreAntjie Krog, Christine Otten, Wim Brands