site.btaWriters Georgi Gospodinov, Theodora Dimova to Participate in Reading Night

Bulgarian writers Georgi Gospodinov and Theodora Dimova will participate in the Reading Night, organized by the French Institute in Sofia on January 20. The sixth edition of the event is dedicated to the notion of fear in literature. The focus will be on fairy tales, fantasy, dystopian science fiction, police investigations, essays, short stories, etc.

Georgi Gospodinov will present excerpts from his works The Physics of Sorrow and The Invisible Crises. He will also read excerpts of Elias Canneti's The Saved Language, while Theodora Dimova will present The Defeated. The event will include readings of works by Victor Hugo, Michel Bussy, Fred Vargas, Paul Verlaine, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Baudelaire, Venius Coury-Gatta, Dominique Elvirand, Tzvetan Todorov, Amélie Notomb and Camellia Kutcher.

Mezzo-soprano singer Vera Nikolova will perform a recital together with pianist Margarita Ilieva. The programme includes works by Antonio Vivaldi, Christoph Gluck, Giuseppe Verdi and Henri Duparc. The film The Diabolics (1954), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, will be screened at 10:00 p.m.

Reading Night events began in 2017 as an initiative of the French Ministry of Culture. They have been organised by the National Book Centre since 2022.

The French Institute in Sofia is participating in the Reading Nights for the first time.