It would be wrong to believe that contemporary literature interests only a very small readership, that there are few who welcome the ever new volumes of a host of very active authors. If it is true that less and less books are sold in Hungary, the tens of thousands who visit the events of the Book Festival and the Book Week every year should still encourage us to think that not all is lost: “merely” new places and situations need to be found.

It is worth creating new circumstances in which open-minded people who read but are not interested in literary events of a traditional choreography may be attracted to contemporary literature. One such possibility is offered by the Literary Travelling Circus of CAFe Budapest, a series of events with music and literature, held at special venues (rather than the customary concert and exhibition halls), the popular ruin pubs of the city centre. The musician–author pairs are only partly ad hoc: most of the artists, like Orsolya Karafiáth and Tibor Legát, or István Kemény and Ágnes Bárdos Deák, have already worked together, while for the others this will be the first time to respond to each other’s art.

Presented by: Palace of Arts