African Book Festival 2020/2021

The African Book Festival has served as a platform for intellectual debates and contemporary literature from the African continent since 2018. After two editions in Berlin, organisers plan to stage the literature festival for the first time in Leipzig and in Munich in 2021. In Leipzig and Munich, the festival has established partnerships with renowned cultural institutions like the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig and the Literaturhaus Munich, enabling it to further strengthen public awareness of literature from Africa in Germany.

The central theme of the upcoming festival is “migration” which will serve as a starting point for further study and in-depth discussion of important topics previously addressed in the Berlin festivals. The project “Telling the Origin Stories” will focus on issues related to origin, belongingness and identity. Each edition is curated by a prominent literary figure from the African continent in order to present audiences with a different regional and language focus. The selected curator of the 2020 and 2021 festivals is the Angolan musician and writer Kalaf Epalanga who plans to emphasise the German-Angolan relationship. The close relations between Angola and the former GDR serve as a point of reference in this context – a relationship which has largely faded from memory. Video recordings of the events, interviews and critiques will be posted online to ensure that the topic and the corresponding events will be discussed long after the festival has concluded.

Artistic director: Kalaf Epalanga
Artists: José Eduardo Agualusa, Michael Kegler, Grada Kilomba, Niq Mhlongo, Yara Monteiro, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Rémy Ngamije, Ondjaki, Johny Pitts, Jackie Thomae