Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Christophe Slagmuylder, Bozar’s Artistic Director: I discovered Claudia Rankine’s work through her collaboration with the director Peter Sellars: they co-created a musical theatre piece about Josephine Baker. Rankine writes powerful texts, and I’m looking forward to reading Citizen: An American Lyric, a mixture of poetry and (visual) essays about hidden racism in the United States. With the US presidential election just around the corner, Rankine’s talk at Bozar acquires added significance.”
Ghayath Almadhoun, Ik heb een afgehakte hand voor je meegenomen [I Have Brought You A Severed Hand]
Tom Van de Voorde, programmer, Writers & Thinkers at Bozar: “I saw Palestinian-Syrian poet Ghayath Almadhoun read for the first time at a poetry festival in Slovenia, twelve years ago now. Hundreds of people, gathered on a square, listened with bated breath to his poems about the civil war in Syria. Since then, we’ve collaborated with him several times at Bozar. Ik heb een afgehakte hand voor je meegenomen is his third collection of poems to be translated into Dutch. The English translation is due soon.”
Ovidie, La chair est triste hélas
Safia Kessas, programmer, Writers & Thinkers at Bozar: “In La chair est triste hélas (Julliard, 2023), Ovidie tells how and why she’s up in arms about heterosexual sex and simulation. A compact, fluid and moving essay. Ovidie challenges our certainties and opens new avenues to a form of freedom that is still taboo. For me, it was therefore an obvious choice to bring her essential feminist thinking to Bozar.”
Edouard Louis, Monique s’évade
Astrid Jansen, copywriter at Bozar: “Just as Virginia Woolf drew up a practical plan to get women to write, Edouard Louis, in Monique s’évade (Éd. Seuil, 2024), recounts his mother's pragmatic view of freedom. Is this a tribute? Perhaps. In any case, the point is not to romanticise escape but to denounce the price of freedom. Louis anchors the intimate with a wonderful gentleness, painting a harsh portrait of an unjust social system.”
Olivia Laing, The Garden against Time
Annelies Beck, writer and journalist: “Olivia Laing is an author who uses her own journey of discovery through life and the world as the starting point for her work. Everybody. A Book About Freedom concluded with questions about what constitutes an ideal world, a utopia. Is it any wonder, therefore, that her most recent book is called The Garden Against Time? Laing is herself an avid and talented gardener. She teaches us to read gardens throughout the ages as records of human creativity, the need to control, and the desire for freedom and escapism.”
Does reading the books make you want to meet the authors? You can find all the events below. Be sure to bring your book and get it signed!
