Minister for National Resources Miklós Réthelyi opened on Thursday, April 19 the XIXth Budapest International Book Festival.

This year nordic literature and culture are in focus at the festival: the Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are guests of honour. The welcome address on behalf of the Nordic countries was given by Ms. Gunn Karin Gjul, Member of the Norwegian Parliament and Chair of the Standing Committee on Family and Cultural Affairs and Swedish author Katarina Mazetti.

As a tradition reaching back nearly twenty years, the festival’s guest of honour writer was featured on the opening day. World-famous Italian writer Claudio Magris was introduced to the audience in Budapest during an on-stage conversation with Péter Esterházy hosted by József Mélyi.

Just like last year, the joint presence of the Nordic countries is also a gesture of cultural diplomacy, as in the first half of 2012 Denmark holds the EU presidency. The scale and the diversity of the Nordic countries’ literary guests is comparable to that of last year’s EU presence: more than twenty well-known Scandinavian and Finnish authors will come to Budapest, and each of them is welcomed with at least one new volume in Hungarian.

Hungarian readers will have the chance to meet noted authors like award-winning crime novelist Håkan Nesser from Sweden, Jostein Gaarder and Tina Åmodt from Norway, Janne Teller from Denmark, Leena Lehtolainen from Finland. Another 100 authors from around the world will also be present, while countries including China, Brazil and Germany -- after several years' absence -- will be showcased.

(Ministry of National Resources)