1st Chania
Book Festival
On the lines of borders
Days
Events
Speakers
Countries
City
Chania is a place that many consider magical and would like to live in. Part of this magic is the spirit it carries, through its buildings, its neighborhoods, its writers, its people. A book festival with its own unique atmosphere is an integral part of this magical puzzle.
The 1st Chania Book Festival is here and it is a reality. It is a great effort that is part of the overall strategy of the Municipality of Chania to make our municipality a fertile ground for cultural creation. Through numerous productions in recent years, we have been trying to highlight this aspect of our place. It is a dimension that goes beyond its purely touristic character and establishes Chania as a cultural destination.
The Book Festival that will be organized in Chania next summer, we hope it will establish itself as a landmark event with national and international significance, surpassing the boundaries of place and time. It is an important institution for Crete and Greece, a significant initiative that will highlight the role of books in the modern reality.
Books should and can be connected to our daily lives, to the everyday life of the people of Chania. There is no special day or time, there is no specific place to read, or even, why not, to listen to a book. There is no right way to read a book, nor does it need to be an individual activity. For this reason, I was particularly pleased with the design of the Festival, which will not be limited to a single venue but will spread throughout the city of Chania.
The Chania Book Festival is not just a series of events. It is primarily an atmosphere and an organized opportunity to meet the protagonists of Art. And Chania knows it well, as it hosts a series of festivals every year and continues to support them. From Wednesday, June 29th, to Sunday, July 3rd, 2022, Chania welcomes the book as the protagonist, and we will gladly support it in the coming years.
The 1st Chania Book Festival explored the concept of borders and boundaries in the fields of literature, history, and international politics, with the central theme of "On the lines of borders" and specific thematic axes of "Borders in Europe," "The boundaries of history and literature," "Crossing the borders of refuge," "Crete as a boundary," and "Mikis Theodorakis: An intellectual beyond boundaries."
The 1st Chania Book Festival took place from Wednesday, June 29th, to Sunday, July 3rd, at the Mikis Theodorakis Theater, the Grand Arsenal (Mediterranean Architecture Center), the Yali Mosque, the Philological Association "Chrysostomos," and other locations in Chania (Forteza, Chania Art Space). More than 100 speakers -authors from Greece, Cyprus, France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Ukraine, and Peru-, publishers, academics, translators participated in over 60 presentations, discussions, seminars, concerts, documentary screenings, musical storytelling, and theatrical adaptations of contemporary Greek and foreign prose, poetry, essays, children's literature, from publishing houses Gutenberg, Agra, Aparis, Dioptra, Ekremes, Eresma, Ikaros, Kastaniotis, Kedros, Keimena, Metronomos, Minoas, Patakis, Polis, Potamos, Pyxida tis Polis, Radamanthys, etc.
The Goncourt Prize 2017 winner for his book "A Disposition to Be Rich," French author Éric Vuillard, the British Hellenist, professor of Philology at Oxford, poet, and novelist Ruth Padel, Ukrainian writer Andriy Kurkov, Scottish author Ali Smith, Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga, Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo, poets Eleni Mariniaki, Marinella Vlachaki, and Katerina Vlachaki, who currently live and create in Crete, author and President of the Society of Authors, Yosef Ventouras, Maro Douka, Petros Markaris, and many other participants gathered under the same roof, that of the Book Festival in the historic buildings of the old town.
