Podcasts The Bookworm Literary Festival

Is something always lost in translation? If so, how do you choose what to lose and who should choose – the author or the translator? Literary translation is fraught with pitfalls and difficulties, yet it enables important cultural exchange and understanding. Ouyang Yu has translated Hanif Kureishi, Anna Enquist and Kingsley Bolton. They discuss and […]

Novelist Kjersti Skomsvold is one of Norway’s most acclaimed young writers. Her debut novel, The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am, is the tragicomic story of Mathea Martinsen, a recluse nearing the end of her life who is afraid that she will die without anyone knowing she lived. With a mix of naïveté and […]

Characters in Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie and Albert Sánchez Piñol’s Cold Skin travel deep into the heart of darkness and come face to face with human nature’s most wicked parts. In Jamrach’s Menagerie, a sea voyage gone awry forces sailors to decide just what they will sacrifice in order to survive. Sánchez Piñol’s unsettling Cold […]

BLF and its Word Alliance partners are teaming up to present “Ideas Travel” – a panel discussion held at all eight Word Alliance festivals (Beijing, Melbourne, Edinburgh, New York, Berlin, Toronto, St. Malo and Jaipur). A different panel of international authors will debate the same issue at each festival. “Ideas Travel” is a real-time experiment […]

In Orpheus Lost, Janette Turner Hospital’s modern day reworking of the ancient tale, a young mathematician falls hopelessly in love with a gifted Australian subway musician. Their love idyll bursts when an explosion rocks the subway and tests their bond – and their very identities. Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts heads to Rollrock Island, a lonely […]

Canadian journalist Joshua Knelman immersed himself for four years in the enigmatic high-stakes world of international art theft. His investigation took him around the globe – from Cairo to New York, Montreal, London and Los Angeles – and up close with slippery thieves and the dogged detectives who follow hot on their trail. In his […]

In Mexican author Ana Clavel’s latest novel Shipwrecked Body, Antonia wakes up in the body of a man. As Anton, she sets out to explore the hyper-masculine world of Mexico City from a new perspective – changing everything she thought she knew about herself. Join us for a special multimedia event featuring videos and more as Clavel […]

Beijing is a foodie’s paradise, chronicled by bloggers, food writers and cookbook creators. With cuisines from around the world and from every region of China, our capital city has something for every palate. Time Out Beijing’s food editor Lillian Chou and some of Beijing’s top food experts, including multi-Time Out Food Award winning chef Max Levy; cheese-maker and […]

Summer 1976. One of the worst earthquakes on record struck Tangshan, killing over a quarter of a million people. In nearby Beijing, the Communist Party was being torn apart as various factions vied for power. In the wake of Mao’s death, would the Gang of Four take control or would Deng Xiaoping bring about reform […]

There are over 160 million females “missing” from Asia’s population. This gender imbalance, caused in part by sex selective abortions, has dire consequences for the entire world. In Unnatural Selection, Science magazine correspondent Mara Hvistendahl looks at how we arrived at such a dangerous imbalance and what will happen when all these “extra” boys grow up. Reporting from […]