The writer's work is to build bridges rather than walls. This idea, with which hardly anyone would disagree, was the leitmotif of a meeting between three authors - the Guatemalan-born David Unger, currently living in the US, Columbia's Luis Fayad and Álvaro Enrigue, author from Mexico.

One of the major literary stars to have visited the book fair is the American author of sci-fi and fantasy novels Tad Williams.

The Book World book fair is the traditional host of the Jiří Theiner Awards ceremony. This year's winner is the Polish translator Jan Stachowski.

With only a few days to go before the start of the Book World Prague book fair, the organisers could finally announce the participation of one of the most outstanding figures from the world of comics and surrealist cinematography, Alejandro Jodorowsky. His visit had already been planned for last year, when the book fair's focus was on comic books,...

The 25th annual international book fair and literary festival Book World Prague commenced with exotic rhythms from the TamTam Batucada drum orchestra. The instruments' rumbling sounds were an unmistakeable reminder that this year's guests of honour have come to the Holešovice Exhibition Grounds from Latin American countries.

What destinies await authors, or should we say their works, when they - for whatever reason - leave their country of origin, their linguistic context, their national readership? Is continuity disrupted? Do they become forgotten and uprooted? This weighty issue was discussed by the Chilean author Jorge Zúňiga Pavlov and his colleague from Cuba,...

"When you talk about Israel, we are neither the West, nor the East. We are people from the Mediterranean. That's our identity," says Abraham B. Yehoshua, one of contemporary Israeli literature's most prominent authors, laureate of numerous awards and writer regularly nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Czech readers are very familiar with the author and translator Patrik Ouředník and it came as no surprise that during his visit to the Prague Book World the Lapidarium welcomed a capacity crowd. And there was much in store for the eager audience.

On Friday afternoon, the Lapidarium hosted a meeting with the American filmmaker Gene Deitch, who connected his life not only with animated film but also with Czechoslovakia, where he found both love and a suitable working environment.

The State of Israel, this year's Book World guest of honour, and the book fair's main topic, which is The Groundbreaking 20th Century, have a lot in common thematically. All the important geopolitical events of the past century had a huge and highly specific impact on this land, whose size hardly exceeding that of Moravia. And, on the other side,...