Fabula ‒ Literature of the World festival

Fabula ‒ Literature of the World festival is the biggest and most visited literary festival in Slovenia and the wider region. Founded in 2003, it has hosted many modern classics: Herta Müller, Irvin Welsh, Jonathan Franz, Hanif Kureishi, David Grossman, Janice Galloway, Richard Flanagan, Taiye Selasi, Tatiana Tolstoy, Eric Vuillard, Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy, Jokha Alharthi, Bernhard Schlink, Vladimir Sorokin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and many others.

During the years, the festival’s concept has evolved and improved. Today, it is based on a well-thought out curator’s work that tries to pick five authors, who are already considered literary classics or who have made a significant mark on world literature in recent years with their work, while the festival programme Fabula Hub also pays attention to perspective, still establishing literary names.

In addition to the literary part, the festival also has a theoretical focus, which each year questions a new relevant social topic. So far, Slavoj Žižek, Terry Eagleton, Chantal Mouffe, Eva Illouz, Jean-Claude Milner, Patrick Boucheron, Umberto Galimberti, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and others have been guests in the theoretical focus.

In 2024, under the slogan What Shapes Us, the festival will take a closer look at the theme of human identity, examining how it shapes our experiences and interactions in the contemporary world. Highlighting 5 authors, it will present echoes of stories that explore the complex nature of identity and memory, encourage dialogue across cultural and national boundaries, and shed light on shared human values. The festival will kick off with a guest appearance by Catalan author Pol Guasch, with whom we will also present this year's international festival collaboration, the Fabula Hub - Balkan Literary Odyssey residency programme, in which Fabula collaborates with partner festivals from Croatia and Serbia. This will be followed by guest appearances by Czech writer Lucie Fauler, Serbian writer, poet, dramaturge and screenwriter Milena Marković, Russian writer Maria Stepanova and Bulgarian writer Kapka Kassabova. In addition to the literary work, the festival also has a theoretical focus, each year highlighting a topical social theme, this year's guest will be the internationally acclaimed Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov, winner of the International Booker 2023. Also visiting Ljubljana as part of the Fabula before Fabula will be the Nobel Prize nominee for Literature, Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu.

Fabula Festival is also distinguished by an extremely varied accompanying programme, which is intended for all generations of readers and brings everything from children's and youth programmes (Young Fabula), interactive literary installations to public space (Fabula polis), collaborations with Slovenian publishers and bookstores (Fabula selection), genre intertwining between literature and theatre and other art genres (Fabula outside literature), to projects establishing the festival as an incubator of new literary ideas and future literary trends (Fabula Hub), thus strengthening the space of the wider literary and social community. The main five guests of the festival and the selected young literary name from the Fabula Hub programme are also accompanied by fresh translations of books into Slovene. Usually, these are also the first ever translations of the authors into Slovene. The important mission of the festival remains to acquaint Slovenian readers with relevant world literature, which has received wider recognition abroad but is still quite unknown to the general public in Slovenia.

All the books will be published in the festival collection by Beletrina Academic Press and will be up for sale, for 10 euros each, as the festival's desire remains the accessibility of the book programme and the spread of reading culture in the general public.