Book Vienna 2022 Promotes International Foreign Culture
Thousands of new publications and hundreds of high-profile events with more than 500 national and international authors and experts will be on display at the Vienna Book Fair from November 23-27, 2022. Diplomacy will also be represented at the fair.
The Vienna Book Fair from November 23-27, 2022 will be held at the Messe Wien in 1020, Vienna. / Picture: © MBG / S. Mantler
All 400 events are prepared and moderated by the best journalists from Austria's most important media partners (ORF television, ORF-Ö1 and Der Standard). All editorial departments, from culture and politics to business and science, are involved here. In addition, hundreds of other publishing and media houses from the German-speaking world as well as numerous cultural and educational institutions present themselves to our audience.
In 2021, around 41,000 visitors took part in Buch Wien despite the strict conditions imposed by the pandemic. Before the pandemic, there were over 55,000 visitors.
The seven exhibition stages - with space for 200 to 600 people each - are further complemented by our locations in the city. When the gates of the trade fair close in the evening, the event continues at around 20 exclusive venues (including City Hall, Wien Museum, Swedish Embassy, Metrokino, Kunstforum, National Library) in the heart of Vienna with exciting discussion rounds and talk formats.
The Vienna Book Fair works closely with numerous country representatives, political institutions and NGOs. Their delegates also take part in Buch Wien in large numbers and enter into an exchange with our authors and experts from politics, culture, science and business within the framework of their event formats.
Buch Wien has been taking place since 1948 - formerly as Österreichische Buchwoche (Austrian Book Week) - since 2008 at the Vienna Exhibition Grounds and is organized by Literatur- und Contentmarketing Ges.m.b.H., which is wholly owned by the Hauptverband des Österreichischen Buchhandels (Main Association of the Austrian Book Trade). Since 1859, this association has represented the interests of Austrian publishers, booksellers, distributors, publishers' representatives and antiquarian booksellers in Austria and abroad in a non-partisan and objective manner.
One-day tickets and festival passes are available at all Thalia bookstores as well as in the online ticket store of Buch Wien. For five days, the Messe Wien will be the central place for networking, exchanging opinions and inspiration. Austrian and international authors can be seen live on stage and at their book signing sessions. and renowned experts from the fields of science, politics, business and culture will be on hand to answer the public's questions during the Book Vienna debates.
You can buy tickets for Vienna's book fair here!
Austria's Foreign Ministry is also represented
At the Bucmesse Wien, visitors to the Foreign Ministry's stand at Buch Wien can expect a detailed insight into the field of activity of foreign culture, a wide range of in-house publications and a multi-faceted program of literary events.
Programs for the promotion of young talent will be presented, such as the International Literary Dialogues call for entries and the literature recommendation program schreibART AUSTRIA. In addition, panel discussions with literary figures from Ukraine will focus on "Ukrainian Writers at War". Recently translated works by Andrei Kurkov (Samson and Nadezhda, 2022) and Olesya Yaremchuk (Our Others: Stories of Ukrainian Diversity, 2022) will be presented and their personal experiences with the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine will be discussed.
Finally, the importance of the Foreign Ministry's international cultural work will also be addressed in a stage discussion on "Foreign Cultural Policy in Times of Great Geopolitical Challenges" with Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Head of the Section for International Cultural Affairs at the Foreign Ministry, writer Carolina Schutti and ORF journalist Wolfgang Popp.
The Foreign Ministry's appearance at the fair is in line with the "International Year of Literature," which was launched together with the Austrian Literary Society. The aim of the focus year, which runs until Austria's guest country appearance at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2023, is to promote contemporary domestic authors, position them more strongly internationally and create an interdisciplinary, cross-border dialog.
Honorary prize for Miljenko Jergovic
On the fringe of the event, this year's Honorary Award of the Austrian Book Trade for Tolerance in Thought and Action was presented. The prize was awarded to Miljenko Jergovic, a "disputatious humanist and precise chronicler of social lines of conflict.
The honorary prize is the highest award that the Austrian book trade has to bestow. Since 1990, it has honored individuals who, in their work and through their commitment to tolerance towards neighbors of other languages and cultures, have shown outstanding commitment and thus made a contribution to peaceful coexistence in Europe.
The prize is endowed with 10,000 euros and is organized by the Main Association of the Austrian Book Trade (HVB) and presented by HVB President Benedikt Föger. At the end of the 14th European Literature Days, this year's Honorary Prize of the Austrian Book Trade for Tolerance in Thought and Action was awarded to the Zagreb-based writer Jergovic on Sunday morning in the sound space Krems Minoritenkirche
Miljenko Jergovic, born in 1966 in Sarajevo, has also worked as a journalist and has lived in Zagreb since 1993. His books have been translated into numerous languages and have won many awards, most recently (together with his German translator Brigitte Döbert) the Georg Dehio Book Prize 2018.