40 publishers have their own stand, 29 more can be found at the stand of the Main Association of the Austrian Book Trade. The IG Authors’ stand presents 500 new fiction publications from around 150 Austrian publishers. The trade fair radio program “Literadio” will once once more offer a dense program of readings by local authors, including this year Vladimir Vertlib, Andrea Grill, Eva Schörkhuber and Jakob Pretterhofer.
The host country is the Netherlands
After Austria appeared as a guest country last year, this year the Netherlands and Flanders are presenting themselves under the motto “Everything but flat”. The guests are planning around 100 events with 41 authors.
When the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (15,000 euros) is awarded today, Austria has a chance of winning an award in the fiction category: Wolf Haas with his novel “Eigentum” and the Vienna-based Serbian author Barbi Markovic (“Minihorror”) are nominated. Fiston Mwanza Mujila has already been confirmed as the winner of the Literaturhaus Prize (20,000 euros), which will be awarded tomorrow to the author, who was born in Lubumbashi (Congo) in 1981 and has lived in Graz for years. Info: www.leipziger-buchmesse.de
