La Monnaie / De Munt LA MONNAIE / DE MUNT

Passa Porta Festival descends on La Monnaie

From 23 to 26 march, the Passa Porta Festival will be bringing hundreds of leading writers together at various locations in Brussels. La Monnaie will also be hosting quite a few encounters with renowned writers, including winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Annie Ernaux.

The Passa Porta Festival is the biannual, multilingual holy shrine for literature in Brussels. Around a hundred international and Belgian writers will be gathering together with thousands of readers during no fewer than 70 events. The festival programme offers possibilities to both meet the greatest names in contemporary world and to be wonderfully surprised by new talent. This will be possible during, among other events, 14 encounters in La Monnaie.

What all of these authors have in common is a battle to have their voices heard or ensure that rarely heard voices can be listened to, which beautifully resonates with the theme of our upcoming creation Cassandra. This applies in particular to:

  • 26.03, 11:00-12:00: Annie Ernaux (2022 Noble Prize in Literature)
    An exceptional encounter with a grande dame of contemporary literature, who has made her own life the subject of all her books.
     
  • 25.03, 15:00-16:00: Eleanor Catton
    Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton introduces the successor to her blockbuster novel The Luminaries: Birnam Wood. Annelies Beck talks to her about this psychological novel in which ecological challenges conflict with ideological differences.
     
  • 25.03, 16:30-17:30: Felwine Sarr and Marielle Macné (FR)
    Economist and novelist Felwine Sarr and writer Marielle Macné together reflect on the festival theme of REFUGE. Whereas Sarr expresses his views through essays on the tripartite ecological, economic and political crisis, Macné primarily writes on the interface between anthropology and poetry.
     
  • 26.03, 16:30-17:30: Ukraine writes back: Oksana Zaboezjko and Victoria Belim Two Ukrainian writers poignantly bear witness to the umpteenth bleak milestone in a long, bitter history: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
     
  • 25.03, 18:00-19:00: Titiou Lecoq and Rebekka Endler (FR)
    How do women find refuge in a man’s world? French and German journalists Titiou Lecoq and Rebekka Endler answer this question from the viewpoint of ‘materialistic feminism’.
     
  • 25.03, 13:30-14:30: Lize Spit and Raoul de Jong
    Boekenweek representatives Lize Spit and Raoul de Jong explore the concept of identity in their most recent works.
     
  • 26.03, 15:00-16:00: Claudia Durastani and Tash Aw
    One author takes us on a journey from jungle villages in Malaysia to megalopolises in China in search of an answer to the question: who is the stranger on the pier? The other author uses all means – autobiography, lyrical essayism and fiction – to claim her place as a stranger. Together they tell a unique story of the immigrant experience.
     
  • 26.03, 16:30-17:30: Didier Eribon (FR)
    Caroline Lamarche interviews French sociologist Didier Eribon about his newest work Vie, vieilesse et mort d’une femme du peuple.
     
  • On the last day of the festival, you can indulge in a literary performance by MM Academy Laureate Raphaële Green: Dead Ladies Show #9