European Literature Night 2014: The 6 Writers
(cf. PART 1 about ELN itself; with thanks to the ELN team for compiling this list)

There is something for everyone as our 6 ELN authors – all appearing at the British Library on May 14th 2014 – present rich offerings of reportage, humorous explorations of the nature of power, chilling dystopia-meets-crime fiction and haunting portrayals of broken familial relationships:

Jonas T Bengtsson stunned the Danish literary scene in 2005 with his prize-winning debut Amina’s Letters. Two years later his novel Submarino with its disturbing and authentic portrayal of Copenhagen’s underworld appeared. Bengtsson writes with an uncanny sense of raw realism and already possesses a literary maturity that distinguishes him from his peers. His novel A Fairy Tale is just out in English translation.
Julia Franck was born in Berlin in 1970. Her novel The Blind Side of the Heart won the German Book Prize and sold over a million copies in Germany alone. It was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by the Guardian and Kirkus Reviews. Back to Back is her second novel to be translated into English and is longlisted for the IFFP 2014.
Antoine Laurain was born in Paris and has written five novels. He studied cinema and started directing short films and writing screenplays before taking a job assisting an antiques dealer in Paris. This experience was the inspiration for his first novel, which was awarded the Prix Drouot in 2007. The President’s Hat won the Prix Landerneau Découvertes and the Prix Relay in 2012 and was a Waterstones Book Club book and ABA Indies Introduce pick in 2013.
Diego Marani was born in Ferrara and works as a senior linguist for the EU in Brussels. He writes for various European newspapers about current affairs in Europanto, a language he invented, and published a Europanto short story collection, Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot. In Italian he has published seven novels, including the internationally acclaimed New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the Vostyachs. His latest novel, a detective novel with a difference, God’s Dog has just been published, with The Interpreter due out in 2015.
Witold Szabłowski, born in 1980,is an award-winning Polish journalist and writer who studied at Warsaw University. Before he began working for Gazeta Wyborcza and its weekly supplement Duży Format, he worked at the TVN 24 TV station among others. He studied Political Science in Istanbul, where he also got to know Turkey inside-out, working as an intern at CNN Türk. He has also written on Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, as well as Poles and the Roms in Brzeg.
Dimitri Verhulst made his literary debut in 1999 but his breakthrough came in 2003 with Problemski Hotel, a provocative novel about refugees in an asylum centre. Greater success came in 2006 with The Misfortunates, a bitter but hilarious autobiographical novel about his youth, growing up in a house with his grandmother, alcoholic father and uncles. It won several awards; the English translation was named one of the best books of 2012 by The Irish Times. All Verhulst’s books are bestsellers in the Netherlands and are widely translated.