Wednesday, 28 April, "What I Saw"

Thursday, 29 April, "The Silent Prophet"

Friday, 30 April, "The Spider's Web"

Aharon Appelfeld (Israel)

Was born in 1932 in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now Ukraine). In 1941 he was deported to a concentration camp in Transmistria (Ukraine) and separated from his father (his mother was killed at the beginning of the war). In 1944 he was liberated by the Russian army. In 1946 he emigrated to Israel (then Palestine). He has published more than twenty books which include: Badenheim 1939, The Immortal Bartfuss, The Age of Wonders, Katerina, Beyond Despair, Conversion, The Iron Tracks, All That I have Loved and Story of a Life. Primo Levi wrote: "Among us, the writer survivors, Aharon Appelfeld´s voice has a unique, unmistakable tone, eloquent through reticence." Aharon Appelfeld lives in Jerusalem.

Edna O'Brien (Ireland)

Was born in 1932 in Twamgraney in Ireland. She grew up in a house with few books, but soon escaped to Dublin where she discovered the novels of James Joyce, which set in motion her move to London and one of the great exiles of twentieth-century literature. Her first novel The Country Girls published in 1960, received wide acclaim, though it was banned in Ireland for its sexuality and sharp-tongued depiction of women in Irish society. The book was burned in O´Brien´s home parish, kindling her life-long "lover´s quarrel" with her native land, imaginatively reposessed by her fiction: August is a Wicked Month, A Pagan Placxe, A Fanatic Heart, House of Splendid Isolation, Down by the River, Wild Isolation, Down by the River, Wild Decembers, In the Forest and Twilight, which is forthcoming. Edna O'Brien lives in London.

Jeffrey Eugenides (USA)

"Whose small, nearly perfect first novel The Virgin Suicides reflects a Greek tragic sensibility with its chorus-like self-immolating young heroines" was born in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan. In contrast to The Virgin Suicides, a precise tale of accelerating grief filmed by Sophia Coppola, Eugenides´ new novel Middlesex develops over decades, exploring the riddle of identity. Selected by the New York Times as one of the three finest American novels published last year, Middlesex is "a transatlantic epic about a star-crossed Hellenic family narrated by an engagingly ironic hermaphrodite." "Only the need for this new thing to enter the world and hence the heart´s rigged game." Jeffrey Eugenides lives in Berlin.

Jiří Gruša (Czech Republic)

Was born in 1938 in Pardubice. A key figure the rebirth of Czech literature and democracy. He began his literary career in the sixties with Knapsack, though by 1969 he was prosecuted for Mimner and later arrested in 1978 for distributing nineteen copies of his novel The Questionnaire in samizdat. A signatory of Charter 77, Gruša was forced into exile in 1982,eventually settling in Bonn. After the Velvet Revolution, Gruša returned to Bonn in 1991, this time as ambassador to Germany. In 1997, he became Minister of Education of the Czech Republic. At present, he is the ambassador to Austria. Gruša´s works include the novels Queen´s Gambit, Dr. Kokeš and Babylon, poetry Prayer for Janinka and Rhein Watch, and his most recent collection of essays Česko - How to Use It. Jiří Gruša resides in Vienna.

Michael March (USA)

Was born in New York in 1946. After graduating in history at Columbia College, he left for Europe where he published three collections of poetry. Goya, When she danced and Disappearance. The co-translator of Zbigniew Herbert´s Barbarian in the Garden. He is the editor of Child of Europe: the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary East European Poetry, and Description of a Struggle: the Picador Book of Contemporary East European Prose. Blue Ash, Blue Flame and Once Divided await publication. Director of the Writers´Festival, lives in Prague.

Robert Menasse (Austria)

Was born in 1954 in Vienna. After receiving degrees in German literature, philosophy and political science at universities in Vienna and Salzburg, he established himself in his native Austria and Germany as one of the major novelists and literary critics of his generation. His works include a trilogy Wings of Stone, Meaningful Certainty and Reverse Thrust, and several collections of philosophical and socio-political essays, most recently Dullness is Kin to Power. His latest novel The Expulsion from Hell will be published next autumn. Robert Menasse lives in Vienna.

Herta Müller (Germany)

Was born in 1953 in Romania. After refusing to co-operate with Ceauşescu´s Securitate, she lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats before she was able to emigrate in 1987. Her novels include: The Passport (1992) and The Land of Green Plums (1993). The recipient of Germany´s most prestigious literary award, the Kleist Prize. Herta Müller now lives in Berlin.

Robert Stone (USA)

Was born in Brooklyn in 1937 and Grew up on the West Side of Manhattan. He served in the U.S. Navy and briefly as a journalist in Vietnam. His first novel A Hall of Mirrors won the William Faulkner Foundation Award, Dog Soldiers received the National Book Award, A Flag for Sunrise won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His most recent books are Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, a short story collection Bear and his Daughter, and Damascus Gate. Robert Stone lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and Key West, Florida.

Ludvík Vaculík (Czech Republic)

Was born 1926 in Brumov, in Moravia. For four decades he has been providing a brilliant commentary on Czech cultural and political life in his weekly feuilletons in Literární noviny. The Axe, The Guinea Pigs and his chronicles A cup of Coffee with My Interrogator established his international reputation as one of the finest authors of his generation. At the beginning of the eighties, Vaculík published The Czech Dreambook a diary novel which recorded the real and imaginary events of 1979. In How to Make a Boy he moved away from public and political concerns into the more difficult territory of modern relationships. Since then, he has published My Dear Classmates, Immemoirs, A Mountain Trip to Praděd, and most recently The Last Word a collection of feuilletons. Lives in Prague.

Spiros Vergos (Greece)

Was born in 1945 in Athens. After the establishment of the dictatorship in 1967, he was forced to leave Greece and spent several years in political exile. In 1975, he returned to Athens as a journalist, a muse he has never completely deserted even after joining the diplomatic service in the early eighties. His first collection of poems Anonymities was published in 1972, followed by Testimony of Death (1978) and Roots in Time (1996). In the Meantime, a collection of essays, appeared in 1990.