Wednesday sees the start of the Passa Porta International Literary Festival at the Balassi Institute in Brussels; this year Hungarian literature is represented by Viktor Horváth, author of the novel Török tükör (‘Turkish Mirror’).

This year the four-day series of events is focusing on the imagination. On the website of the Balassi Institute in Brussels the Hungarian author makes it clear that the festival will enable around one hundred writers to invite readers into their imagined worlds, with an emphasis on flights of the imagination which are independent of countries and cultures.

At the institute on Sunday at 4.30 p.m. Viktor Horvath will read from his work. The Hungarian writer was awarded the 2012 European Union Prize for Literature for his novel Turkish Mirror. This novel, written in 2009, takes the reader on a journey through time, showing 16th-century Hungary: the colourful but unstable frontier zone between the two great empires of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans. The reading will take place in Hungarian and Dutch, but the text will also be projected in French.

The opening event of the Passa Porta Festival will be an evening of readings by the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal. The works of the winner of the 2011 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade may not appear in his own country, because in his writings he condemns Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism and political oppression in all its forms. The 64-year-old is one of the few Algerian intellectuals who have not left their homeland and are openly critical of the political and social system there.

As can be read on the festival's website, a special evening will be dedicated to authors coming from the countries of ‘The Arab Spring’, and there will also be appearances by representatives of African literature from Togo, Sierra Leone, the Republic of the Congo and Somalia. The festival is also organising literary walks and will look at local legends. The Icelandic writer Sjón will pop up as leader of a group in the museum dedicated to the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.

Also attending the festival will be Romanian novelist Mircea Cărtărescu, who in 2011 was one of the guests at the Budapest International Book Fair. In Brussels he will read from his work Orbitor (Blinding).

The Passa Porta Festival is held every two years, in 2009 Péter Nádas was guest of honour, and in addition to reading from his work he opened an exhibition of his photographs. In 2011 Péter Esterházy represented Hungarian literature in Brussels, together with Attila Bartis, György Dragomán and Krisztina Tóth as part of the programme New Hungarian Literature.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)