We are getting dangerously close to the festival, just a little more than three weeks away! Scary. I don’t want to see boxes of programmes lying out in the office (apart from the ones going to the Royal National Hotel) and we are frantically dispatching the ones that are left. Nothing more depressing than being told that such a place has run out of programmes, calling up and being told, no, thank you, we still have loads in the office. Then, please, why don’t you put them out!!!!!??????????

Yesterday evening I went to a great Intelligence Squared event. The motion was “Public schools are a blight on British society“. Two of the speakers for the motion were David Aaronovitch and Francis Wheen in top form and their performance was an excellent omen for their conversation on David’s book, Voodoo Histories, at JBW. I’m sure this will be a great session.

The IQ2 audience was very public school yesterday evening and you could see at once that our friends did not have a chance to win the debate (although they did really well and swayed quite a few undecided voters). There I was distributing our JBW programmes. Funny how people can looked wary of receiving a simple booklet. So I had a big smile on and would say “it’s just a book festival”. As usual, quite a few people returned it to me when seeing the Jewish on the cover, not even bothering to open it. This makes me slightly paranoid and I start saying “you don’t have to be Jewish to attend!” to which a charming gentleman, who had returned the programme to me, exclaimed “but I am Jewish and have already got one!”. Very reassuring! This said, I did not go round the room at the end of the talk to see how many programmes had been left lying on the floor. Better not…

Some of the people there yesterday distinctly belonged to the world Anthony Julius described in the excerpt from his long-awaited book, Trials of the Diaspora, recently published in the Sunday Times. There definitely is a very upper class form of antisemitism but I have to say that as a Frenchwoman, I experienced the same feeling of deep contempt towards me and my country and I would tend to believe they despise anyone who does not belong to their world. It’s just expressed in the most chilling and underhand way.

Not surprisingly, Anthony Julius’ session is our bestselling one at the moment, closely followed by the opening night, A Fine Romance on Jewish songwriters, the discussion between the Chief Rabbi and Susan Neiman and the closing talk on Israel and J-Street. It will be interesting to see which of these five sells out first.

Which takes me back to my usual question of how Jewish should Jewish Book Week be. Judging from our audience preferences, possibly even more Jewish than it is at the moment. But then, wouldn’t it be too inward-looking? Leading to my own frequently asked question of how to get a non-Jewish audience to come to JBW. Why is it that non French people will easily go to the Institut francais but non-Jews fear being “alienated” at JBW? Why the lack of curiosity or distrust? Would you (you being my, I suppose, Jewish reader) go to Christian Book Week (if it existed)? I was delighted to be invited to the Muslim Writers Awards and really enjoyed the experience.

Last but not least, we are very proud of our first pre-JBW podcast made by Becky Jacobs, Gerald Jacobs’ (distinguished literary editor of the JC) talented daughter. Here it is. Listen to it, let us know what you think and feel free to circulate widely!

I was in Paris last week-end for the third edition of the Rencontres des Livres des Mondes Juifs, beautifully subtitled Diasporas en Dialogue. This is the brainchild of a friend of mine, inspired by our very own JBW and sharing our beautiful logo. It only lasts Saturday night and Sunday all day for the moment but is packed with people. Ironically, it takes place at the Hotel Lutetia which had famously been used by the Nazis during the war but became the place where people returning from the camps would be welcome and where those hoping for their returns would come for news. I like the fact that it is now the home of a vibrant festival of Jewish thought and meetings of minds with representatives of other diasporas.

One of their stars this year was the unique Amos Oz as the French are lucky to already have his new book, a collection of interrelated short stories for which Oz paid tribute to Carver and Tchekov, “the great writers of small things”. He talked brilliantly of literature and the lack of separation between fiction and non fiction, comedy and tragedy; of the difficulty of being an Israeli writer, always feeling guilty of doing the wrong thing, not writing his novel when attacking the government, not taking a political stand when writing his fiction, of generally feeling guilty, and worse of all, guilty of belonging to the very people who invented guilt; he was very brief on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so not black and white as outsiders keep seeing it; he also lamented the infantilisation of humanity and our constant pursuit of the next material thing to possess as if happiness depended on acquiring the latest novelty and discarding the past, thus forgetting that our greatest treasure is our memories.

Oz was echoed in this by the acclaimed economist Daniel Cohen who gave the most impressive analysis of the consequences of mondialisation. He presented a very powerful picture of the modern man as a dissatisfied walker, doomed to strive to reach an unreachable horizon. We always think that a little more money will bring happiness but when we get this increased wealth, we quickly get used to it and want more. We are only capable of solidarity when it’s not needed. I am sure his views will be echoed by Oliver James, the author of Affluenza, in the JBW discussion of what we have learnt from the economic crisis, if anything. I would love to have your views ahead of the panel.

There were many other talks on other topics such as Jews and Poles before History, Rome and Jerusalem, fiction and memory and the festival ended with Alain Finkielkraut who was supposed to talk about his new book about the great authors of fiction who shaped his life and thinking (Kundera, Camus, Roth, Conrad, Dostoievski, Henry James, Vassili Grossman, etc…). But put two strong minded French intellectuals together and you get a bit more sparks than would be comfortable with in the UK. Finkielkraut spoke beautifully of the novel as safeguard of human plurality, agreeing with the idea that ideology can easily lead to hatred whereas fiction fosters love and understanding. I don’t know if he would agree with the idea that writing can change the world, to be discussed at JBW by Michael Arditti,  Amanda Craig and Moris Farhi, but it can certainly help us understand what it is to be human. In the run up to the session, we’d like to compile a list of books that changed the world and we’d love to have your suggestions.

GDA

We had our first JBW quiz on Monday night in the lovely Lockside Lounge in Camden, hosted by Lana Citron and Cosmo Landesman. It was certainly a lot of fun to organise. We called in a couple of friends to help us design the questions. Some were probably too easy and others much too difficult but I think everybody had fun. To all of you who missed it, why not try a few sample questions and see how you would have fared. We’ll give you the answers next time.

Literary families: What is the relationship between Assaf and Jeremy Gavron? (both appearing at JBW).

Guess the lonely biblical heart: Recently bereaved Orthodox man, with a good heart, a skin condition and fear of strong wind WLTM understanding n/s woman with GSOH. Must keep a kosher kitchen.

Who lived at 23 Campden Hill Square?

Can you find the two authors appearing at JBW whose names have been mixed up in this anagram: Infernal evil senior hen.

Who was Evelyn Waugh describing as: ‘Very poor stuff…I think he was mentally defective…the chap was plain barmy.”?

Who is the odd one out among Yiftach, Cain, Abraham and Oedipus

Which novel was originally to be called A Jewish Patient Begins his Analysis?

On a more serious topic, I had a meeting at the Royal National Hotel with Marcus Gipps, from Blackwell, in charge of our book fair and Ofer from Steimatsky, who has certainly seen it evolve over the years. The book industry is going through very turbulent times. We’ve recently seen the demise of Borders and Books etc… The Apple tablet is eagerly awaited but there is no doubt that the Kindle and other electronic devices are going to revolutionise our experience of reading. More and more people buy their books on line, drawn in by the discounts offered by such websites as Amazon or the point system on Blackwell’s. (I do hope many of you are buying books through the latter from our website as this is another way of showing your support to JBW).

There was no way the JBW book fair would stay the same in the middle of all this turmoil and I know that many of you will not like it. It is not Blackwell’s fault or ours but just taking into account the recent changes. It is far from uncommon to see people browse in the book fair, note down titles and leave to go and presumably order them from Amazon. All to often the supposedly essential titles missing in our selection turned out to be out of print. And we know what sells or doesn’t and cannot ask our bookseller to create a huge bookshop for just a week and then spend months returning books to publishers.

 So like most festivals, our bookshop will offer primarily our speakers books which, as we know from past sales figures, represents 65% of sales. We will still have a range of books by non speakers, mainly Jewish interest books published in the last year or so. We have invited publishers to take their displays out of the main book fair, on both Sunday afternoons, and to sell their books themselves at -hopefully-  much discounted prices (not having to go through our bookseller anymore) which should benefit everyone, them as well as the book buying public. Steimatsky will still be there with books in Hebrew and we will also have an antiquarian bookseller. Blackwell will be able to take in orders and most excitingly to print books on demand (in the store, not at JBW) on their Espresso machine which has been called a “retro Kindle”. Then on the second Sunday, when we have our kids events – the Little Bookniks interactive lounge and authors Anne Fine, Inbali Iserles, Judy Jackson, Meg Rosoff,  Justin Somper and Jonathan Wittenberg- specialist bookstore Bookworm will be selling children books.

I don’t believe the future of reading is threatened. The book as we know it and the ways to obtain it have changed. We are living through exciting times and, as “the people of the book”, we cannot but eagerly follow these new developments. You are more than welcome to share your thoughts and get the conversation going.

On a good day, I can see the post office tower from our office window. Maybe we could ask them to change the countdown to the Olympics (which really feel much too far away) to the start of JBW…. 43 days still seems bearable, the panick only sets in when we turn the calendar page from January to February and the festival is there, looking back at us from the page.

So, as promised, a look behind the scenes. The programmes have gone out, quite frantically, to as many people as possible. So far, the reactions have been encouraging as witnessed also by ticket sales but no reason for complacency. There is still an awful lot to do and too many people who don’t know about the festival or wrongly think it’s not for them either because they are not Jewish or not bookish.

I’m afraid this is also when we realise we have made mistakes and have to make amends for them. For instance, in the printed programme, we credited the wrong producer for the film on Jewish life on Poland, A Different World, we will be showing on Thursday 4 March. It was actually written and produced by Raye Farr and we are very thankful to Martin Smith for undestanding that the mistake came from an American website and still graciously allowing us to show the film. I think many people enjoy these free screenings on weekday afternoons which depend on the film makers or producers waiving their fees.

I also had to apologize to Sharon Harnoy, the lovely cultural attachee at the Israeli Embassy without whom we could not bring as many Israeli speakers as we do but who confirmed her support after we had gone to print. What so many people don’t understand -who have in the past called for the boycott of festivals where Israeli artists only appeared because the Embassy had paid for them- is how broad minded they are and often willing to sponsor writers or film makers regardless of their political opinions. On a slightly different note, it is interesting to see how most of the fiction that gets translated from Hebrew in this country are the ones who deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Alon Hilu and Assaf Gavron being cases in point. Both try to write from both sides’ perspectives.  I’m still waiting for a copy of House of Rajani in English but I’ve read Crock-Attack and was completely stunned by it. Gavron tells the story of a man who survives three terrorist attacks which makes him a symbolic hero. Not surprisingly his life is utterly disrupted and he can’t go back to his usual routine now bereft of any sense. It also follows a young Palestinian involved in the attacks and now lying on a hospital bed. The novel is utterly gripping, very raw, sprinkled with terribly black humour and its conclusion very powerful.

I would be curious to know what is the percentage of novels written in Hebrew dealing with the conflict overall. What is translated reflects the interests of the country commissioning the translations of course.

We’ve been kept quite busy by the quiz. I’m sure everyone will have loads of fun on Monday night,  we certainly did when writing the questions. We are lucky to have a fabulous intern helping us from now until the end of the festival and great friends who’ve joined the team to devise entertaining rounds. Apparently calling the quiz “literary” has scared some people away. In fact the questions are a mix of gossip, general knowledge and call on imagination and creativity, so really nothing to be scared by. And I’m sure our hosts, Cosmo Landesman and Lana Citron, will make it all quite hilarious.

The rest of the week has also been busy with lots of exciting events. It started on Monday night with the 2009 translation prizes (one of my favourite events as I deeply believe in the need for increased access to foreign literature) and a very impressive lecture delivered by Will Self on Sebald and his writing as Holocaust literature. It was brilliant, deep, extremely well researched and insightful with the right zest of humour and provocation. We’ll post the link to it as soon as it is published. It makes me look forward even more to his conversation on Jews in all their forms with Adam Thirlwell at JBW.

On Tuesday night, Jonathan Miller was opening the exhibition on movement that he has curated at the Estorick collection in Islington, a wonderful collection of photos that influenced the Futurists. His interview at JBW09 was one of last year’s highlights. On Wednesday night, Ben Uri opened an exhibition of some of their masterpieces, including their recently acquired Chagall painting. I can only wish them they eventually get the home they deserve for their impressive collection. Then Thursday was Tiffany Murray’s booklaunch at Daunt’s. Tiffany was our writing coach for a day last year at JBW. Her new book, Diamond Star Halo, has already had an enthusiastic review in the Guardian.

A friend commented she was surprised to see me out in the run up to JBW but it’s quite the opposite, we have to be out and about as much as possible and leave a trail of JBW information behind us. These were all great events to attend but in theory also perfect to spread the word and distribute programmes. I don’t want to appear rude and am completely incapable of going up to utter strangers and start peddling JBW so I try to find the right balance and hope the small piles of programmes I’ve deposited in various venues have not been thrown away. As to those of you who for some reason have received more than one programme, please pass them on…

GDA

Tomorrow is the day: the programme goes live and we’ll know if you like it or not. The response from JBW Friends is encouraging as are the reactions from the first people to have seen the printed programme. If you are on our mailing list, you should receive yours very soon if the snow does not play too much havoc. We can’t wait for your feedback.

I feel guilty as we had promised you a look behind the scenes of the making of a festival and did not quite keep our promise. The last few weeks before Hanukkah were pretty hectic. First we waited for a potential “big name” to agree to come to the festival. After an initial promising response, we had three weeks of unnerving silence. The clock was ticking and we were debating between pushing and provoking a no or being optimistic and holding up the whole programme on the assumption he would eventually said yes. The final ultimatum did indeed provoke a no for 2010 but a hopeful promise for 2011. Good to know….

Then with all the sessions finally agreed upon, came the writing of the programme. Having worked with the same designer for the last few years really helps. Karen is an angel of patience. Every year, we promise ourselves we’ll need fewer versions but 10 seems the magic number we cannot go under. I have to say our proof readers have eagle eyes, although I’m sure some of you will find a few mistakes.

The artwork finally went to the printer who did a fabulous job. Our first batch of programmes arrived in the office the day before Christmas, a rare treat as we normally have to wait until the beginning of January. I could go away on a high. My best holiday reading was The Red Tent by Anita Diamant which I had saved until then. What an amazing book! I loved the way she completely rewrites the story of Dinah and shows Jacob and his sons for what they most probably were: pretty rough uneducated shepherds looked after by some very brave and hard working women. I can’t wait for Anita’s contribution to our opening night, a Purim Spiel with a difference: Sex, Lies and Regal Japes: the Story of Esther, the sex-crazed king and his evil counsellor. We’ve already seen Irving Finkel’s story and it’s tremendous! And I’m sure David Aaronovitch, Assaf Gavron, Shappi Khorsandi, Kathy Lette and Simon Schama won’t disappoint us.

Now comes the dreaded time when we wonder who, among our 129 speakers, will have to cancel. This will be my fifth JBW and, as a rule, it always happens. Fingers crossed, this year will be the exception as I really love the programme and want everybody to be there.  I think this is definitely our most eclectic programme ever with sessions for everyone, from football to philosophy, Jewish revival in Poland to peace in the Middle East, queer theory to bad scientific ideas, the threats to democracy to fighting for justice, not eating animals to feeding our children well and much more.

So from tomorrow, we’ll have to stop ourselves from checking ticket sales every 10 minutes to find out which sessions appeal to you and if we programmed right or not.

Now because the 27 February is quite a long way away, we thought we’d have a little get together in January. Why not join us for our first ever literary quiz on 18 January? It will take place at the plush Lockside Lounge. Our hosts Lana Citron (last seen blowing kisses from the plinth in Trafalgar Square) and Cosmo Landesman (who told us so entertainingly about his parents’ quest for fame at the last JBW) are sure to make it a lot of fun and we promise the questions will just tickle your brains and there will be something for everyone, not just the super litterati (but just a hint, a good read of the programme might come handy….). Bring your friends and book a table for six or come on your own and meet some interesting people. Tickets are only £15 per person. We are also collecting desirable prizes for the raffle and our quiz winners. It will be a great night and a lovely boost to JBW.

GDA

Exploring the slippery line between fact and fiction and the overwhelming auspiciousness of the number 8, JBW, along with the JCC held our first ‘True Tales?’
We were blessed with fabulous tellers, from the worlds of fiction, non-fiction and the slippery places in-between. Novelist and striker for the English writers’ football team, Joe Dunthorne; Academic and professional middle-class worrier, Bridget Escolme (last seen presenting a Pecha Kucha in her pyjamas), performer and curator Brian Lobel (last scene performing with no clothes on), fiction reviewer and writer, the formerly chaste, Hephzibah Anderson; and writer, performer and serial kisser, Lana Citron.

8 are the nights of Chanukah, days of the brit milah and resonant in other ways. It is the unsung magic number, underrated, and overlooked until this night when we all sung its praises, explored its facets, lauded it to the treetops. There’s the magic 8 ball, invented in 1942 manufactured by Mattel as a fortune-telling tool. There are the 8 symbols of Tibetan Buddhism, the 8th Red Army, the legs of a spider (two of which are at the heart of storytelling traditions -Arachne and Anansi.)

Our 7 tellers (yes, one cancelled) elaborated on 8 in entirely different ways. And in case you were counting, the other two tellers were hosts Rachel Mars and me,  Mekella Broomberg.

We were drawn, and at times lured, into:

• Princess Diana fixations in the twisty back streets of Calcutta
• Seeing an ex after an 8 year hiatus, but he was walking into De Beers New York store with his new girlfriend.
• A father who didn’t see his own parents after the age of 8 and his daughter’s subsequent fixation with childhood loss.
• A fierce coveting of chocolates after the disappointing gift of a box of After 8’s.
• Being party to the humiliating seasonal ritual of a tokenistic Channuka performance tagged on to the end of a primary school nativity play.
• Receiving life-changing advice from a belly-dancing guru, teaching figures of 8 with her hips.
• Inheriting the Hawaiian ‘8’ method for finding lost items (visualise yourself, with outstretched arms in the top section and your lost item in the bottom section. As you do this draw the outline of an 8 in the air with your two index fingers) 

The  audience composed their own 8-word memoirs and then huddled together deliberating which of the stories was the fictitious one; the proverbial hamentaschen amidst the latkes.
All the performers negotiate the slippery boundaries of fact and fiction on a daily basis and each of us knows well that even when you attempt to confine yourself to one the other inevitably creeps in, so I had imagined identifying the tall tale would be virtually indecipherable. And yet, when it came to the vote it was pretty much unanimous, and everyone was right. This may suggest the line is clearer than I had thought, or maybe people blush and touch their neck when they’re lying. … I remain undecided.  Either way, although the story was made up, the Hawaiian ‘8’ method is a true philosophy, and works for non-Hawaiians just as well, in case you’d like to try it.

There’ll be more ‘True Tales?’ at Jewish Book Week  on Saturday March 6th, this time the theme will be ‘Imprints of Home and Exile’ and we’ll be featuring another slew of super talented tellers.

Yesterday, I went to see Our Class, Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s amazing play, in a version by Ryan Craig (What we did to Weinstein). I was going more out of a sense of duty, expecting a deeply harrowing play. The young man who served me an expresso before going on (it was a matinee) said that he had seen the play, that it was excellent but that he could certainly not see it a second time. We joked that after the theatre, I’d go to the cinema to watch The White Ribbon and then jump off a bridge.

The Class follows 8 Polish classmates from before the war to nowadays. The play opens with the “children” introducing themselves, announcing what their fathers do and then what they want to be when they grow up. We know that few will be able to realise their dreams and the story that unfolds before our eyes confirm our worst fears. Slobodzianek based his story on true events that happened in the village of Jedwabne, after reading Jan Gross’ Neighbours. But it is a story all too common. It happened in Poland and in the rest of Europe during the War, but since then it’s happened in Cambodia, Rwanda and Croatia and could certainly still happen again.

The three hour long play is definitely a must see. The eight actors, always on stage from beginning to end, are amazing. The very simple staging in the small and intimate Cottlesloe makes the play extremely powerful. By the end of the first half, stunned by the horrors we had just witnessed, we needed the 20 minute interval to recover, mostly in silence. The second half was about the complexity of what happens afterwards; questions of guilt and innocence, courage and cowardice, justice and retribution, truth and lies, none of them clearcut and easy to answer. And yes, some of the children from the beginning had fulfilled their dreams but the cost they had to pay for them on the way made them worthless. The sense of absurd waste was all too powerful.

This play is remarkable as part of the way some Poles are willing to confront the past. Many still resent not being able to hide behind the Nazis for the crimes committed during the war and it is easier to stage Our Class in London than in Poland but still, this is a welcome step forward. The production has been made possible by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw who are also supporting Jewish Book Week 2010. My colleague Mekella has been invited on a tour of Jewish Poland and this will be reflected in our programme.

We are planning a discussion between Professor Jonathan Webber, author of Rediscovering Traces of Memory, a beautiful book on Jewish Poland and what has been left of it today, with Janusz Makuch, the founder of the most successful Krakow Jewish Culture Festival which attracts tens of thousands of people, Jews and non-Jews, Poles and foreigners, come to celebrate Jewish culture. They will certainly discuss what Ruth Ellen Gruber calls “Virtual Jewish”, this renewal of Jewish culture without the Jews, which can provoke very contrasted reactions. They will definitely talk about these many Poles, like Makuch, who sincerely want to recover something they consider part of Polish culture and for whose eradication they strongly blame the war generation.

We will also welcome the great Polish novelist Pawel Huelle whose stories have been internationally acclaimed for their intelligence and irony. His mother, who was Jewish, was the only member of her family to survive thanks to her aryan looks which enabled a family to adopt her and save her. The five year old was brought up a Catholic. Who Was David Weiser?, Huelle’s first novel was the story of a Jewish boy who goes from outcast to local hero.

We will also take you time travelling into Polish Jewish literature with Henry Goodman and Beverley Klein who will read texts by Bashevis Singer, Bruno Schulz, Ida Fink and many more writers, interspersed with Klezmer music.

We are now putting the very final touches to our programme which is already with our designer, Karen Cinnamon. I’m updating the website and the Friends of Jewish Book Week will be able to see the full programme as early as the 10 December and book their tickets. Becoming a friend gives you a number of advantages as well as a free book on joining. It is also a much welcome way of showing us your support. These are not the best times to organise a book festival. Advertising in the programme has plummeted, publishers are reluctant to pay for authors to come from abroad and some of our sponsors are themselves struggling financially. Yet we do not want to raise our ticket prices or lower our standards of excellence. So we hope you will join us and that we will not disappoint you!

I was invited to attend the Toronto International Writers Festival and what a treat! It is fascinating to see how other people in different countries do things. Some you can hope to learn from and possibly replicate, others you know you won’t be able to, such as having your office and green room in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel…

The opening night was a heart warming event with Diana Athill and Alice Munro in support of Pen. The audience had paid $100 for the cocktail and talk and it was a full house. The two grand ladies of letters were funny, honest and obviously enjoyed meeting each other. The words “short stories” were not mentioned once and I wondered when, in the UK, people would realise that a short story writer is not simply someone who still has to grow up to writing long stories. Munro won the Man Booker International but is not eligible for the Booker! at least for the moment. You can listen to their podcast on the Globe and Mail website.

The next day, with Orhan Pamuk, the mood was quite different . He started with a 20 minutes reading of his new novel, The Museum of Innocence, followed by an interview. He was charming, tongue in cheek, thoughtful but became icy cold when asked about politics. Why is it that writers who come from “difficult” countries can’t simply talk about their novels. It’s journalists who ask political questions about topics that are simply not in the books. And no he does not regret expressing the views he did but was not going to be drawn onto that terrain. As to talking about his assassinated friend, the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink whose photo was on the stage, he was simply not the subject of a talk show. I felt sorry for his lovely interviewer who was looking more and more uneasy. I also felt sorry for his translator whose name he simply did not mention but explained that it did not reflect the amount of work put in by him and other people to make the English text his own. He talked beautifully about writing about a town, either as an outsider regretting what’s missing or an insider tracing a personal map of all the places relevant to the author’s own story. He dismissed writers who say they are led by their characters whereas his novels are carefully plotted. He was there, as in his books, perfectly in control and most brilliant to watch and listen to. I had once dreamt of having Pamuk in conversation with either Amos Oz or David Grossman but I doubt this will ever happen. Pity!

I attended an interesting event trying to bring in new technology to the book festival. The room was set up cabaret style and the young woman I sat next to didn’t seem overjoyed by my company. She had probably hoped for a handsome stranger not a middle aged lady. People were invited to tweet about the session as it went along, a bit like thinking aloud in writing, their tweets for all to read on a screen. There also was a journalist from the Toronto Globe blogging live on the event. The discussion was all about Peep culture as opposed to Pop culture, writers blogging in character, etc… The most interactive moment of the session was still when people were invited to get up and learn how to open a coconut. That’s also when I finally chatted with my neighbour. Then a band riffed to screened You Tube videos, a woman being spanked, a kid bewildered by anasthesia, Susan Boyle… That’s when I left. Probably not one to bring home, apart maybe for the coconuts.

The festival went on with a mix of readings and round tables. Readings are a serious affair, with 4 or 5 authors (novelists, poets or even non fiction writers) reading for 20 minutes or so each and an interval in the middle, no questions or discussions. Some writers love it and are very good at it, others tell me they don’t see the point of it. I think the odd mixing enables to introduce new voices or genres. It can also be a sort of best of the festival. Maybe one to try at JBW… I would love to hear what people think. I was only at the festival for a few days but heard an impressive of international authors such as Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Boualem Sansal, Colm Toibin, Sherman Alexie, Iain Pears, Adam Thorpe, Sarah Waters, Tash Aw, John Irving, Michael Ignatieff and, of course, Anne Michaels and Margaret Atwood.

I was impressed by the relatively young average age of the audience and so were my colleagues from New Zealand and Australia. There were even some amazingly stunning Punks complete with Mohicans and studded jackets come to meet David Byrne who was talking about his Bicycle Diaries. Students go in free although apparently most of them don’t take advantage of the offer and will buy their tickets. I also learnt a new term: “toilet review” as practiced by my of my colleagues who will shut herself up in a cubicle after an event to hear what people say about it. In that case, it was after AL Kennedy’s superb show “Words” and the review was enthusiastic as it should be.

Back in the UK, I was greeted by Amanda Craig’s blog giving some advice to festival organisers. Her list of dos and don’ts makes sense and I hope we don’t suffer from too much of the faults she attacks. The question of how much a writer should be paid is a difficult one. We tend to think we help an author promoting a new book but it must be said that even established writers today receive advances which become pityful if divided by the time it’s taken them to produce their new work. I always try to put myself in the author’s shoes and make sure what we offer is worth coming to JBW. It may definitely not be the payment but hopefully the pairing with another writer, an attentive audience, a good and well-prepared chair and, of course, good book sales. Definitely for me the most exciting part of devising the programme is the matchmaking between authors. I was delighted to know that AL Kennedy and Shalom Auslander or Sarah Dunant and Amy Bloom are still in touch. And at our next festival, I look forward to conversations between Susan Neiman and the Chief Rabbi, Philippe Sington and Frank Tallis, Etgar Keret and Jonathan Safran Foer and last but not least, Michael Arditti and … Amanda Craig. If you have not yet read her wonderful Hearts and Minds, rush and get a copy.

Last week end I attended one of the loveliest book festivals in the UK: Small Wonder, THE short story festival which takes place at Charleston, Vanessa Bell’s beautiful house, close to Lewes. So many things make it special: it’s location close to the Sussex coast and in the undecorated barn of the Bloomsbury set’s country home, the beautiful garden where one can wander, read, chat or nap during the leisurely one hour intervals between sessions and it’s very essence: it is THE only short story festival in the UK.

I’ve always loved the form, the tightness of a story that has to evoke a whole world or tell a full life in just a few pages. The French poet Charles Baudelaire said that writers wrote long stories only because they were incapable of writing short ones and Grace Paley said life is too short for writing anything longer than short stories. I’ve heard Etgar Keret tell how everytime he would start a story, he would think that he was embarking on a long work of fiction, something on the scale of Lord of the Rings, to be done after just a few pages. One of my most exciting reads recently has been a small volume by David Eagleman, Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlife, each one amazing and surprising in its depiction of the many possibilities awaiting us after we die.

I did not attend every event in the festival but the ones I did were thoroughly enjoyable. My first one was a reading from Liver by Will Self on top form. The beauty of a short story festival is that the length of the texts makes them suitable for reading out loud, something extremely pleasurable, especially by someone as gifted as Will, it takes us back to our childhood. It reminded me of Daniel Pennac, the author of the Belleville Quintet, remarking that all too often once children know how to read on their own, they get deprived of that intimate moment with a parent, leading more than one child to reject the exercise altogether. This is why, as he explains in Reads Like a Novel, he used to read aloud to his secondary school pupils to reconnect them with the pleasure of stories and books. The Small Wonder evening ended with a late night event in a gorgeous Arabian tent I would have loved to go to if I did not think I would fall asleep on the scattered mattresses and cushions. Children’s books were to be read aloud, unashamedly taking the audience to its early years.

The next day would have felt like a marathon anywhere else than at Charleston. I was not the only person attending all the sessions. So was the lovely Tania Hershman, whose collection of short stories, The White Road, I so enjoyed, and who came to JBW last year. She likes to start from a true story, often with a scientific slant. She is also the person who best captured the illusion of being fully bilingual and the trials of not living in one’s mother’s tongue.

Erica Wagner read a very funny story by Margaret Atwood and wondered at the reasons why the UK won’t give the same credentials to the short story as other English-speaking countries will. Since her days as Booker judge, she is still campaigning to include short story collections in the selection. Paradoxically Alice Munro who won the Man Booker International Prize cannot be entered for the Booker Prize in the UK! All too often the short story is considered just a stepping stone towards writing a “proper” long novel and many publishers will only publish collections after an author has made his or her mark. It was obvious there were many would be writers in the audience, some of whom had attended of the writing workshop, and this was reflected by the number of questions about the process of writing itself. (Which did not exclude the question to Will Self about his flamboyant shirt and why he had chosen to wear it….).

Esther Freud read a powerful, partly autobiographical, story about a young writer’s visit to PalFest, the festival that takes writers to the West Bank. Earlier that week, I had gone to listen to human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh at an event in London. His account of the  pain of living in Ramallah today was painful to listen to, the thwarted hopes, the huge gap between the two sides, each one dehumanising the other, made for a difficult experience. Still, as I told him, I hope that one day he will come and talk to the JBW audience. If festivals only exist to talk to one’s own, I don’t see the point of going on organising them.

Going back to Small Wonder, AL Kennedy read a story part of Freedom, an anthology commissioned by Amnesty International to commemorate the Declaration of Human Rights. She gave us a lesson in putting oneself into somebody else’s shoes, not necessarily the most sympathetic person. It was the story of a young woman soldier in Iraq, inspired by the Abu Ghraib scandal, who finds herself transformed into a torturer. As always with AL Kennedy, the story was spare, funny and tragic all at once. I got a chance to chat to Alison afterwards and found out that she and our friend Shalom Auslander with whom she did a session two years ago are still in touch and that he’s had a second son, Mazel Tov! Creating connections is another raison d’etre for festivals.

Hephzibah Anderson, Kathy Lette and Christopher Fowler took part in a balloon debate in which each had to defend his own favourite story. I like the balloon debate format and one may appear at the next JBW. Something has to be thrown out of the plummeting balloon to help it regain altitude. The speakers battle it out to convince the audience that it is not their story or idea. HG Wells won over the Kama Sutra and a story about a teenager’s efforts to have his first sexual experience. I’ll let you guess who was supporting which.

Ben Okri introduced us to his new invented form the Shoku, a mix between a short story and a haiku, a very short short story with a strange dream like quality. I told him the very exciting news (for us) that for the first time ever JBW would commission new writing and asked him whether he would agree to come, he was very encouraging and said that, if he could, he would gladly do. Indeed we are planning two events of unread and unheard before stories. The first one will be our opening night, a Purim Spiel with a twist on the 27 Febuary and the following Saturday, an exercise on the flimsy line which separates fiction from non fiction. Watch this space to learn more about future developments and the names of participating writers.

Michel Faber gave us an idea of the unbelievable treat it is to be given a new story. He first talked very movingly about his experience as a writer, his delusion after the huge success of The Crimson Petal and The White and the discovery of the literary circus. This was followed by his powerlessness confronting the war in Iraq and the impotence of the writer at changing the world. As a result, he went through a dark period of reclusion. Having finally gone back to writing and accepted Diana Reich’s invitation (the magical force behind the festival), he felt it his duty to write a story which he introduced by saying that it may never be heard again or read anywhere as he had no intention of publishing a new collection any time soon. It was the moving story of a man whose marriage is falling apart but who is trying to at least salvage his relationship with his young daughter. It was just perfect, a real gift, all the more beautiful as it was totally unexpected. He then read us a hilarious excerpt from The Fire Gospel, a book on the vacuous quest for literary fame and money, a short pastiche of some recent overblown bestsellers and a satire of religious fanatics and gullible believers.

I hope this will make you want to read more short stories and, if need be, reevaluate this underestimated genre. Against my strongest determination, I came back with a pile of new books to read I don’t know when. Small Wonder was also the occasion of the launch of a new website, Spoken Ink, which will enable its subscribers to listen to the best new writing. Hopefully they will have convinced Michel Faber to include his story.

First of all, I have to confess that I am a huge fan of Margaret Atwood. I still vividly remember reading The Handmaid’s Tale and being completely gripped by it. Since then, I’ve read almost all her books and the “almost” is only explained by the fact that for the greatest part of the year, my reading is dictated by my work.

Yesterday evening I went to the launch of her new novel, The Year of the Flood, a loose sequel to Oryx and Crake. Margaret Atwood is a writer who thinks of the business of being a writer. Today it is not enough to produce wonderful books and hope the public will love them. You have to be a performer, to sell yourself and we, festival directors and events organisers, are part of the problem. For someone like her, with myriads of adoring fans round the world, this meant the invention of the LongPen which enabled her to sign her books from the comfort of her own home. And yes, apparently it works but yesterday, she was signing for real. 

On this occasion, she showed us how she had rethought the traditional book launch. No mere reading or interview for her but ” a dramatic and musical presentation” of her novel, the promotion of a new book and a fundraiser for a good cause (in that case the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). The event took place in the Church of St James, Piccadilly.  It felt very much like a wedding. There was a sudden hush of anticipation and, eventually, Atwood walked up the aisle, last in a procession holding magical blue lights to the tune of a choir already on stage. She started by explaining this was the beginning of a three months tour but that she was offsetting her carbon footprint and would try to be vegetarian for most of the time, in tune with the topic of her novel, a dystopia on a world destructed by man’s folly, a world -she warned us- that we have partly brought upon ourselves.

Atwood sat in one corner of the stage, playing the narrator, while three actors played the different parts and a choir sang the hymns sung in the book by God’s Gardeners, a religious group devoted to the preservation of all plant and animal life. The result was thrilling and the audience really felt part of a very special and unique event. Judging from the queue of people at the end, it certainly also translated in hefty book sales (and yes, I did buy my copy even if it will now have to wait until March for me to be able to open it).

Now why am I telling you this story? I would obviously love to invite Margaret Atwood to JBW. There are enough themes in her book which should resonate with our Jewish audience: the Golem-like genetically spliced creatures which pullulate in this future world, the effort to repair the world (Tikkun Olam) by the Gardeners and our duty to the poor planet we live on, the role of religion, the idea of pure and impure foods (and by the way we are still awaiting news of Jonathan Safran Foer’s participation in JBW to launch his book on “not eating animals”, could vegetarianism be the new kosher?…). But I guess that by March, Atwood will be resting at home, deep into her next novel, so no hopes there.

No, her launch was an answer to a question any literary event organiser will ask him/herself: how do we present fiction? There is something terribly unfair in the exercise. Here is a writer, who has been sitting at home for months, lonely and free, suddenly forced to face the whole world and bare it all. We want the story and what is behind it. As with DVDs, we want to see the making of which is so fascinating.

Should we do Dickens-style straightforward readings? It can work when the author is enough of an actor to give an amazing performance and I have witnessed some of these but only too rarely. Most of the time, we seem content to have writers discuss their books. They usually end up explaining what is not fiction in a work of fiction, an exercise in paradox if there was one. They walk a fine line between revealing too much of the story and whetting their potential readers’ appetite. I have seen interviewers who had not read the book, maybe as a way of protecting the audience -who would not have read the book either- from too knowledgeable questions… I have also seen usually academic interviewers lecture the audience on the writer’s work while the poor author sat slightly dumbfounded and wondering what he was doing there. No one describes this better than Amos Oz in his latest novel, Rhyming Life and Death, and I could not feel but amused that it was the book he launched on his first ever visit to Jewish Book Week!

I did enjoy the performance at St James but I would lie if I said I did not prefer listening to Margaret Atwood’s excellent interview by Mark Lawson the day before on Front Row. Of course, in an ideal world, I would have loved to have both, one after the other.

And let’s not forget, as one of my friends said, a small independent publisher without Bloomsbury’s means, ” I cannot imagine what I would do if any of my authors came saying they want a book launch with a choir and actors!”.

But we will go on thinking about the best way to bring you literature. We all remember the success of the reading of Zangwill at JBW a few years ago (listen to the session) and we are planning more spoken words events but probably with new specifically commissioned material. So do watch this space for exciting developments and, in the meanwhile, let us know what you prefer when it comes to fiction: authors’ interviews, readings, Q&A or reading groups?

PS: I’ve just finished reading the most wonderful novel, The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, short-listed for the Booker Prize. Do read his interview and definitely read the book! I do hope I will have more to tell you about it in the future.