 Welcome to the British Library, where we are passionate about European writing and literature and we're very happy to share European literature night with you this evening. Books have no boundaries, no borders. I'm B Rollat of the Cultural Events Team and I'm very excited about the lineup tonight. We have a, hello, we're all excited to have some writers of outstanding merit and literary influence and they will all be in the reassuringly talented hands of Alex Clark. Now, Alex is a renowned critic and chair. She's a wonderful writer herself and has been a podcaster long before everyone else got one. She is also a ceaseless font both of literary wisdom and also just the plain old joy of books so I'm really happy to hand over to you Alex. Well, hello lovely audience. I am going to come to each of the writers at the beginning of this event and just ask them to talk about the book, their latest book and to put it in context and then we're going to have a conversation about this incredibly ambitious title that's been set as Writing the World. Now, I don't know if we can write the world but we're going to try and write a corner of it this evening. I'm going to start with Lauren Binet. Lauren is the author of novels including Ash, Ash, Ash, Ash, H, H, H, H and the seventh function of language and his new book is Civilizations. In all his books, he sets himself the task of imagining history is somewhat different from the history that we've learned in books and in civilizations what he does is go back to the 16th century. Lauren, tell us what the book is. Well, basically the book is what you call I think an alternate history, what I call an Ucronia. In the way I just imagine that the discovery of America didn't really happen. Columbus didn't make it and didn't come back from Cuba and the Spanish people, Spaniards, they didn't discover and invade and conquest America but quiet the opposite. Incas and Aztecs, they invaded Europe and so it was like because I always enjoyed the what if game, what if it happened differently from the time I was a kid. So apparently I wanted to write one of those what if stories and instead of choosing the what you can read quite often, what if the Nazis won the war. I chose another event which basically I think is one of the biggest events in terms of changing the whole world which was Columbus and the discovery of America by Europe. And I think if you reverse it, if you imagine Indians from America, Incas and Aztecs invade Europe then the whole world would have completely changed. Not only Europe, not only America but the whole world because many things you know but basically I think because that time, the ending 15th century or the beginning of 16th century was a time of many many changes but it was the time of one thing, the beginning of capitalism you know. And if you cut really from the beginning that time of the growing capitalism in Europe because Incas they had a completely different system. If you just cut right at the beginning that's growing capitalism then you, me and everything, everything would be very very different and I don't say better or worse, I just said very very different and so it's, I think it's exciting to think about it. I mean it also just sounds from me who couldn't imagine doing something so sort of on such a scale, terribly daunting, liberating because you can put anything in but you've given yourself a very big canvas haven't you? Very big, sorry. Canvas, a very big kind of landscape to a terrain. Yeah yeah I mean it was, I mean I could feel like God so in that way it was very exciting but in the same time I wanted my story, my counterfactual story work, working you know. So it was not at all the big freedom. I couldn't write whatever I want you know. I wanted, I wanted to make it logic you know so I had to accumulate a big knowledge and a big understanding of the logic of the 16th century, the facts of the 16th century to change them but step by step you know like you move a brick and so all the building is trembling and then you move another brick and then the building is reshaping you know. So it was really like I mean I needed maybe much more historical, historic knowledge than what I used for HHHH or you know so it was, it was funny, it was in a way it was yeah I was God but in another way I was really, I mean I was very very careful just not for for instance not to use a character which would, which was dead at that time you know or I mean you know like yeah I had always to be very very careful so it was, it was very interesting very interesting game. Thank you very much it's kind of a game for the reader too and I'm sure we'll come back to that. I'm going to to move now to Anna Kim whose book The Great Homecoming takes us back to Korea in 1959 to Seoul and tells us a story of you know a man who in fact we meet at the much towards the end of his life who's recalling this period from his youth and introduces us to a very interesting triangle of people. Anna will you, will you tell us a little bit about it? Yeah well yeah it's a story of a friendship actually or three friends you know the narrator of the book and Johnny his best friend they all develop feelings for one woman I mean they both develop feelings for one woman and whose name is Eve and Eve is it's a very mysterious figure because it is not really revealed what her backstory is what her history is rather what people say about her and of course that also is because the whole book is narrated from one person's perspective so Yoon-ho says what he knows and of course he doesn't know everything so he also interprets and maybe even makes up stuff you know I leave that you know to be not so clear and Eve is there's a question whether she's a spy maybe she is or she isn't and is she spying for the north is she from the north is she spying for the south is she spying for the Americans so there's a lot of things are unclear about her she's a she's I think I really like this character because politics at the time especially was made by a man and she as a woman tried to influence politics in her own way and maybe she didn't do it on a big scale but she certainly did it on a small scale. I was really interested in the fact that you know you're taking us to this this specific historical period when you know there's a civil war and all the time sort of surrounding that and you've overlaid a kind of suspense story in a way because we don't know who Eve is she is a mysterious kind of cipher at the heart of the novel I was interested in how you sort of blended those two ways of seeing in fictional terms what made you want to write like that. It was a very natural choice really because at the time everyone was spying on everyone I mean it was the the late 50s where there was a time when the South Koreans developed their secret service and the North Koreans developed their secret service and there were all these secret agents running around running wild because they weren't yet put in in big groups but they were more or less like small groups all trying to be better than everyone else getting more information competing against everyone else and it was a time of a big paranoia and so the suspense really comes very naturally with it you know if you have a situation where everyone is afraid of everyone else it creates lots of mysteries everyone is thinking you know everyone is having their own ideas of what is actually happening in their heads and I think that creates suspense very naturally. Yeah it certainly keeps the reader really gripped and I know we'll come back and talk a little bit more about that. I'm going to just finally come to Jenny Erpenbeck the author of Go Went Gone, The End of Days, Visitation and The Old Child in the Book of Words. Now Jenny is a novelist as you will you realise from that but her new book is called Not a Novel so we can only assume that it is not a novel indeed it's a collection of non-fiction of pieces spanning all sorts of times various kinds of writing including a fantastic series of lectures. Jenny just just tell us why you wanted to collect these pieces together and also what what we can expect when we read them. Yeah there are in a writer's life there are some occasions where you have to speak to a certain audience to a smaller group of people like in a lecture to students or like if you get the prize and you have to deliver an acceptance speech or something like that and also when people were inviting me to speak about this or that subject that just interested me and the text was written for only this one audience and so I thought it perhaps makes sense to to collect these texts because in a way they were more intimate they were closer to to closer to my my real life and they in a way I was more open to these to these smaller audiences and I put a lot of I put a lot of effort in in writing these articles or speeches or essays and I thought it's in a way it's also it's a pity if they just yeah are lost in in in my bookshelf and it was also kind of of of uh encountering myself in a way because they uh I was uh carefully thinking about what text to include and which one not and so I would read also through texts I wrote in very young age and I thought about including or not and it was it was also like for the first time in my life for me it was like looking back and encountering myself yes you describe writing itself as a way of encountering yourself of course when you put these collected these pieces together you were encountering all your different selves and they include you as a writer writing about writing as an East German writing about the fall of the Berlin Wall and as as a as a person you know writing about things like the death of your mother I mean to see all those side by side I wonder if it was like looking back on the sort of writing equivalent of a kind of photo album yeah in a way I I made my own archive and I I love archives I I also left archives when I wrote my my other books and and I was doing some research so so I fell in love with these kind of documents and in a way it's it's my own uh uh yeah archive or perhaps even museum of time again just to take take that phrase you know writing as something or that idea writing as something in which you encounter yourself Laura your your novels are so kind of historical so sweeping do you have a sense of encountering yourself in your writing well I guess you always have to uh but I just I'm not sure how but like HHHH it was connect I don't know you know with HHHH everybody was asking me are you from Czechoslovak are you Czech or are you Slovak and I was not you know I mean just like you're right about I mean it's always the the um what happens in your life you know and occasions or chance in your life which gives you the the which makes what you are you know and so the the story with HHHH was just I was it was it's always about luck you know like civilizations I wrote civilization I didn't I didn't know nothing about the conquest of America and the the Cortes Pizarro and the Indians and Atahualpa it was just a name for me and I maybe I even didn't know that name but I was invited to some book fair in Lima you know and so this is just the just that chance that luck in the life then I got I went to Peru and I got interested and then fascinated and then thinking and thinking and then some kind of vision was just uh um started to to uh to picture in my mind you know so it was not really I mean I'm not from Slovakia I'm not from Peru but my life brought me there you know in Czechoslovakia in Prague and so um so this is how it happened but to answer to answer your question on another way I would I would say that Pierre Bourdieu used to say that you always write against something you know and I think this made me as a writer like when I was 16 or something I was I discovered the surrealism you know the the the the group of surrealists and they were very very angry and very angry especially against uh the the standard of literature the the and the novel you know and I started as a writer with my friends we were writing poetry and automatic writing and we were very very very angry you know and uh and they were very angry after the after the the realistic novel the after bazaar to make it short you know like the they were swearing that I would never write uh the the the marquis will live at five o'clock you know like the marquis sort of the marquis was living at five o'clock you know and at that time I always I promised myself I would never write such a sentence you know and uh now I think I tried to keep that promise what I what I understand with that kind of uh of promise was something like I will never write just a normal novel you know and uh this is why uh now I try to I try I mean I I don't try but I do it I do write what you can call meta novels or things like that you know or alternate alternate alternate um history novel or things like that and so I just know I'm not that angry and I'm not angry after balzac but um I still don't want to write a basic novel you know it has to be uh uh one way or another to be complicated something like that you know laurel thank you um and I and I think you about the conversation we were just having before uh that we're uprising I mean I know that the anger did form a part of your genesis as a writer a part of your early writing and it was really fascinating talking to you a little bit earlier about that I wonder if you'd you'd talk a bit more about it and about that idea of locating the self meeting yourself in writing uh yeah um I guess um yeah anger it's it's maybe uh I think it's it's anger but it's also a way to um claim a voice I guess because um I grew up in in the 13th district in vienna in a very white neighborhood like totally white it's like a little posh um there's a lot of villas here lots of very um um rich people and lots of sons of and daughters of politicians and um I went with them to school and I was the only um Asian looking child or actually there was there was one a girl who later in in the last year of her at school she she said that um she came out and she said that she was she had a Hungarian parents and then in the same year another girl came out too and she said oh wait by the way I have um Slovenian parents it was that kind of atmosphere you know um an atmosphere where uh people actually concealed their identity which I discovered later but I was a little shocked by it I have to say and um and and I often had the feeling that I couldn't say what I wanted to say or I felt in a situation I I couldn't for for many reasons not just because of the political situation but also because of personal situations maybe I was too shy maybe you know I was a girl girls were taught not to be so loud and not to speak up and all this you know and so um but the anger remained or the or the urge to actually reclaim my voice to actually say what I mean and that was um and I think that played a very big role in in starting to write because I started to write these little essays these little pieces for um which I called before um hate as hate hate writing which is maybe a little bit too much but um they were certainly very emotional and I would just they were almost hysterical actually and I would make fun of the people that I I thought needed to be made fun of and um and thankfully these pieces have never been published but um and I'm a little bit ashamed that I actually did that you know to be so vindictive but um yeah I mean um writing is also a weapon so I guess I I had to use aggression to actually come to to writing too in some ways well that that idea of writing to externalize pain to somehow be able to kind of name trauma pain suffering uh is is is a really interesting one when we think about writing the world um Jenny is it something you you explain uh you know the pressures of growing up in the society that you did and then that that changing did you find yourself writing the trauma of that down sort of externally as it were yeah for me uh it was for instance always very hard to speak about this um change which was going on after the fall of the wall and I always found found it easier to write about something that is difficult for you or for me in this case than to speak about something so so I would always try to um to put question the questions that I I have myself into my text so so this was a kind of also of perhaps not not hated writing but but uh writing that uh had its source uh in the things that couldn't be expressed so easily and in the questions that that I had myself and this is wonderful that so far we've we've we've managed to diver immediately onto anger and pain and resentment and rage and that is what I think of the sort of proper subjects of novels in lots of ways but um thinking about how we write about politics and history um it seems to me a lot of the kind of discourse that we experience in in various countries that we all live in and across the world now is so sort of anti that that kind of confronting of sort of pain and emotion writers seem to be almost sidelined in understanding our sort of shared discourse what do you think a novelist can or should do to sort of tackle that to tackle the kind of deficits in our in our shared discourse I've asked a rather complicated question there and I'm not sure who might like to tackle it first but I may pick on Laurent because he's he's smiling and nodding that maybe because he thinks it's a ridiculous question not at all I smile because I understood maybe 60 of your questions so more than I did more than I did if you can rephrase the beats I would appreciate well I think what I what I'm sort of what do you mean by tackle tackle I'm not sure the I'm sorry but no not at all I think I'm saying that we have a discourse at the minute a sort of our general political discourse and shared discourse seems very debased and it seems to treat people in a very uncaring and alienating way is there a role for the novelist should or can the novelist insert themselves into that discourse what do you think about that Laurent well it's a it's a now I understand the question I think it's a complicated question so maybe it was better I did not understand everything but what I what what I can say I mean what I think now is it's it's interesting that we all are talking about north south east west you know north korea south korea east berlin west berlin eastern world western world and so it's really about areas conflict between areas you know so I mean and I mean I understand that this is more personal for Anna or Jenny you know but this is not very personal for me but still I wrote about western world america indians from america you know and europe and and so I think it's I guess it's always the same story you know like domination you know so I mean at a certain time you know there is a war and some people they are winning some people they are losing and different different yeah I mean this is the topic of the of the of the evening you know different world confronting facing facing themselves you know and this is I think this is not my role this is not the the writer's role to to explain you know but just to show to show that that confrontation you know and and and to to uh yeah to show the scene of that of those two world two world facing you know like it's it's like I mean the the the it is the the the story of a tragedy you know like what is a tragedy you know one one man he says one people he says I want that another another people say I want that and then the story starts you know I mean the problem the conflict starts you know and so this is what we're talking about now it's the same but not only about few people but about worlds you know different worlds like people from a tragedy facing the facing themselves you know and so I guess it's the the the recipe to to to make I mean it's it's a start of a story you know whatever the scale you know the scale of just one man against another man so it can be a tragedy I it's also a western you know I mean this is this makes a western but if you if you if you make it at the scale of worlds then it becomes something epic yes yes Jenny if I can come to you and and say you know when when Lauren talks like that about being able to show something being able to show confrontations collisions between cultures people is that something that you've tried to explore that you think it was something you wanted to explore in your own writing yeah I think the the chance that literature has compared to journalism is to to really make visible how history enters the the concrete lives of people and not just of of one person but it also has a chance to to give different perspectives of of one thing or one time in history and what always interested me is that that an author can can put him or herself in different angles and look differently on the same story and and this is something that I think is important for understanding history because if you for instance take the fall of the wall there are hundreds and thousand stories to be told about many many individuals and everyone adds another piece of a story to the to the whole and so so I think this is interesting and especially in prose that you that you have enough time to to tell all the stories as as a body so to say I mean I was really struck Anna when you were talking a little bit earlier about your own experience of going to school being one or one of the very few Asian children there and other children hiding their own heritage is not really talking about their identities and heritages and what you feel that the novel has and the novelist's role is in saying look these are our identities these are our multiple multiplicity identities and how much that can be melded into a sort of as you were talking about kind of natural storytelling yeah I guess I was thinking earlier that one of the big disadvantages that novelists have if they want to insert themselves into a discourse like that is that we are often too late I mean as a novelist you know you work on a novel there's a topic that's you know it's a very pressing matter and you think about anything yeah yeah yeah I really would like to say something about this but you know in order to say something about this as a novelist I have to start here and then I have to include this too and and and there is this too and you know you want to as as Jenny said I you want to look at it from many many different perspectives you don't just want to do black and white you want to do the layers and when you show the the gray areas and maybe you want to also say that look out what is actually the truth is there actually a truth what is truth can there be truth is there one truth there are lots of truths but you know and so and so as a novelist I found myself often to be too late like one of my my first novel was about a crossover war in in crossover and it came out in 2008 and that was like almost 10 years after the war it ended and I felt very bad about this because I thought okay it should have come out you know like at least five years earlier then it would have made maybe a bigger difference maybe it would have you know people would have been more interested or I don't know but there is this this this dilemma of time here will you just give us the title of that novel because I'm aware that you're the order of several novels for those who are reading in English I think anatomy of a night and frozen time have been translated yeah it's frozen time um but of course we we should also you know talk about that issue of translation because we are you know we're we're doing this event from from the British Library we're talking about the English translations of their book which again gives a sort of time lag uh you each work I think closely with your translators who I will mention Jamie Lee Searle is is your translator uh Anna uh Kurt Beals is your Jenny and Sam Taylor you've worked with for a long time I think Lauren um how important again is working with with those translators I don't know Lauren would you like to would you like to talk about that well it's uh it's a very funny experience because I mean English is basically the only language I can understand a bit so it's it's special to to read uh to read the English version of my book it's really like familiar and strange you know it's me and not me and so it's really like you feel that somebody else added something to to your work you know and uh this is the vision of somebody else about your own vision so it's it's something very very strange very interesting and well I'm I have to say I'm delighted to I don't want to say to work with Sam because Sam is working on my text and asking me a few questions from time to time you know and I tried to answer but the result I mean as far as I can see it and what I hear from uh English native speakers his work is wonderful so I'm very very glad to know I mean I feel in good hands when I know that he will take care of my text and this is this is true also for other languages even if I can't read them because after a certain time I know that my Dutch translator she everybody say I can't be sure that she's good you know but everybody says that she's great you know and so I feel confident to to give her my work and so it's a very pleasant feeling and on the opposite I mean like Japanese translation or Chinese translation I'm just happy to see the book is translated but I can't I mean you know I even don't know which side I should read the book because it's very so it's a it's a very strange feeling but very very pleasant feeling you know and very and I feel very grateful for those people who were working spending time on my text and I think it's very very moving you know yes do you do you find that Jenny you when you work with with a translator um how has that that process been for you I saw especially with this book I was um I was working for the first time with Kurt Beals whom I met in person when I was teaching in St. Louis and and he's a professor in St. Louis for German and um he he's a he's a very uh careful translator and it was a wonderful work and it um I think it was even harder than to translate uh the the novels because uh in in some passages it's almost like philosophy philosophy text and and so it was uh it was hard work much harder than I expected it to be because we really discussed things and I I tried to to uh you know to explain to him how how an East German feels like about certain words and vocabulary you saw it was it was a tricky work and I liked it a lot and he did a great job and and um yeah I um I should also say that my mother was a translator for literature she she had studied Arabic so so I have the greatest respect for for translators and I know how how badly they are paid for how much work yes the the sort of unsung heroes of of opening up borders between people very lonely work um and I just just just say what has your experience of translating your work been like um it was always very uh different some translators never contact you if not even a single question and all of a sudden the book is out and and and she wonder hmm is the translation really good did she really know everything it's often her I mean translated it's often women that's why it said um she and um and some translators ask you lots of questions and you really think okay uh they really read the book very carefully they look at every sentence you know twice three times four times and then they come up with the most interesting questions like um you have like one one question was um I had to define very uh strictly the word word heiterstelle in German is it a bestop I was asked once is a bestop or is it an underground stop what kind of a stop for what kind of vehicle is it because in English you have to be very specific apparently and in German heiterstelle is you know it seems like a very simple word and you know you don't have to really say if it's for a bus or a bicycle it's just a stop and and um I thought it was very funny that you know that all these cultural differences come out in language of course I mean of course I know that because I grew up with um Korean and German so I always had the trouble of having to translate at home too because I only spoke with my parents in Korean and um and often because my Korean isn't very good I had to translate my own sentences into German into from German into Korean and then I would make mistakes so I would always I use the wrong word and then my mother would correct me and and so the I guess the process of translating was not so alien to me but um that's so interesting um in other words you had sort of different languages kind of rubbing up you know sort of brushing up against each other a friction between languages uh yeah unfortunately yes unfortunately I um in my experience being uh growing up with two languages is very it's at times very unpleasant I often had a feeling the two languages were competing against each other and one language was hating the other and then one language was trying to jump on top of the other and you know the other language was pushing it away and it was it was um yeah okay well I'm I'm I'm now going to get to actually go into a moment of sort of frivolity silliness now because this just happens to chime with something I saw today on social media where somebody was saying that they had been playing a game with with with one of their children and they had said uh okay you've got a two magic potions one means that you can speak any language in the world to an absolute degree of complete fluency and the other means you can play any well not only every language or you can play every musical instrument in the world to sort of virtuoso level which would you choose now I thought instantly well language because then I could read all the books I mean you'd need a sort of eternal life but if but but I kind of want to know what you think because it does set off such such an interesting chain of thought doesn't it what do you think who knows what they would like uh sorry what's the alternative again it's either being brilliant at every musical instrument in the world be able to speak every language in the world well I guess language well I feel that writers should all say that but I wonder if you will Jenny what do you think no Jenny I would vote for the instruments Anna what about you you've got the sort of casting vote now uh for my own experience I would say instrument too because I can speak every language I just don't believe it and not to the same level but Anna it's a magic potion we can't have realism okay okay it's a magic potion and I will take language okay I feel I kind of strong arm no I think that the the music is a universal language and if you if you are able to play all the instruments you you will you will immediately connect to all the people um this Jenny is making you know I must ask you your background was in music you you worked in opera didn't you you know before you were a published writer now yeah and and and uh if you imagine that you also can play the instruments of other people that are far away and and you will you will be in the middle of the culture and of all the you know the the the music is something that is um in a way expressing oneself directly and and in a way more complex than words can do words I would say they they try to or if you write words you try to create a space that comes near to music okay so anyway I would I would describe it yes I guess I guess yes Laura you're you're you're laughing what do you what is that how you uh you're agreeing no I would keep language anywhere no she would still keep language I think I would so you're very persuasive Jenny but I think I would now I'm going to remind our audience that we're going to take some of their questions and they can just submit them via the question tab we are going to be hoping that that is working if it's if it's not I'll find out I'm sure because there won't be any questions however I'm going to just just continue by asking you all um this last year has obviously been extreme it's uh been a very different experience for all of us it's also exposed great kind of inequities between nations but connection I mean we're all speaking from different places um and we are joined from people from many many different places how do you feel the experience has sort of made you think about your writing and writing in general I'm actually going to again to come to you first Anna because you mentioned a little bit earlier that feeling of a novelist you might want to write something about the situation but it kind of takes too long in a way I'm not asking whether you're going to write a pandemic novel but the idea of these feelings that have been produced and how they feed into your work uh yeah well the the the last year was um especially difficult for me and and writing because um and and reacting to the world because um I have a very small son he's now two years old and at the time he was one and um I was um mainly most of the time just deprived of sleep and and um I was just I'm hoping and praying that um here's uh that uh the the that how do you call this the kindergarten it's not closing down again so um so no there's not definitely not going to be a book about a pandemic in terms of your your sort of thinking about about writing and about the kind of way that we relate to each other how has how has it felt to you who are you talking sorry I didn't get your question sorry I was I was actually I was just asking asking um Anna but I think you're slightly slightly froze at that moment I was just asking you in terms of we we we accept that you're not going to write a pandemic novel uh of course and I wondered how it had nonetheless the last year had felt in terms of sort of feeding into your feeling about writing okay I think I've you froze again but um um I'm going to try to reply to an to a question that I'm not totally sure that I heard um I think uh the the the the pandemic uh um had um um I think it it it it it made it stronger that that literature or that the arts are not essential I mean one of the things that happened was that everything cultural was shut down um and that uh because you know we were in the arts we are declared um system irrelevant in German you know you're not relevant to the system so you know basically it doesn't matter what you do you can you can write a hundred speeches and you know no no one's gonna care and the only thing that we actually do care about is the pandemic um so that that made me actually very uh very pessimistic about the the whole business of writing or business the whole idea of what literature means to um us to our society and um whether it even makes sense to choose new books if I'm being very you know um very pessimistic well well you're speaking you're speaking sort of truthfully and and openly so you know that's that's how it felt to you Laurent what about you well maybe I wouldn't I wouldn't be so pessimistic because uh we realized everybody realized how important it was because I mean like life is meaningless without restaurants theater movies cinemas books and things like that and we we deeply felt it you know like because without all of that this is like a zombie life you know zombie life and now everybody knows it you know so the the emergency situation made the government decided that this is not not essential but everybody understood how uh essential it is you know deeply I think you know nobody can't ignore that we need more than food to live and to and even to survive you know so that in that way that that was um yeah that was interesting you know Jenny what about what about you how has it felt to you Maya I think um um in a way literature is privileged compared to other kinds of of art because um for instance the bookstores uh have been kept open like like food stores like like uh mental food uh in Germany at least and and and also writers I think could um could continue working perhaps they some had to cancel readings but but essential work of writing you you could do if you compare it to people like um actors or singers or musicians people that really that that can produce art only when they when they are standing on a stage or playing for an audience compared to these people we were lucky I I think and and uh I think what Lawrence said he he's very right uh we could feel that we are missing a lot when and and uh I think now we are all a bit tired of uh spending time without um company and friends and and also uh the the kind of exchange that is enabled by art yes yes well on that on that note we have a question from the audience uh and it and it's a big question a key question it asks can literature bring people together can it address social division now who will I single out Anna I'm going to ask you um yeah well I'm the pessimist here so maybe that's the wrong person um I think in theory yes in theory literature can do it and and and does it with every book um but in in practice I'm I'm really not sure I'm really not sure I'm I remain skeptical I remain very pessimistic um I think um in the last year of the last year of the pandemic I think um more Netflix was consumed than books were read but okay maybe that's just me I also had lots of stories about computer games um I did not hear so many stories about you know books being picked up and um and here in Bavaria by the way bookstores were closed yeah yeah yeah and I mean I heard from lots of publishers who are actually in a bigger trouble because of all these closed bookstores um yes I must say also also with me in in Ireland Lauren what about you are you do you feel literature can bring people together it might seem a very kind of optimistic it's a big question and I don't know I don't know if it's the role of literature or you know I mean I see my role as like everybody has visions you know but the artist bring his own vision to the world you know and then it makes it creates some eco it gives some ideas some feelings to the people who read or who enjoy who enjoy art somehow and then the result doesn't have to be peace in the world or why in the world you know it just makes the the the the world the the the imagination the the the vision of people moving you know and shaping the shaping the the visions of the the people for the worse or the best you know so but so it's I think I think it's a too complicated question for me and um and I also want wants to say that in France the first first the the the bookshop they were closed at the first lockdown and then it was decided that we have to open it so it moves from the non essential to the essential you know like to the uh then uh it became as the food you know as Jenny said that it was considered as the food for the mind and Jenny the the sort of final word to you how do you feel about this idea of of social division and and writing as a balm for it? In a way I think the the starting point for perhaps every real writer is that he or she uh contains at least two worlds within herself or himself uh as you said it before that that you were uh between the Korean language and the German language or things like that and also for me it's like uh like the eastern world in which I grew up and and later on the the western world I experienced so so every every writer I think contains two things that are struggling with each other in himself or herself so so if if one starts to to write uh this kind of connection that is made in one person is essential to to all the writing and and to uh I think otherwise one wouldn't start to write if if there wouldn't be this kind of um uh dealing with two things that confront each other and and so the connecting point is is is essential too I think yes well I I think we can all kind of second that because the connection is essential even if it's sometimes very hard to make to these wonderful authors Lauren Binet, Jenny Oppenbeck and Anna Kim thank you so so much for joining us this evening I was immensely enriched by all of your books and join us again at the British library for for more events but until then thank you very much to all of you