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A Stamboul Train full of writers
Twenty European writers recently hopped on a train to Istanbul. What
were they up to, wonders Michael Prodger
By Michael Prodger
Daily Telegraph/UK
Published: 5:30AM GMT 06 Dec 2009
The most evocative of destinations: Istanbul Photo: GETTY
The journey to Istanbul by train has a venerable and generally
murderous literary history: as Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient
Express, Graham Greene's Stamboul Train, Ian Fleming's From Russia
With Love found their way on to the bookshelves they also chugged into
the subconscious. While the Orient Express covered the route with a
thick layer of glamour and romance these novels added a frisson of
danger. They ensured that emerging from a sleeper car in the Sirkeci
station, the pink faux-palace on the edge of the Golden Horn that
marks the end of the line, is still the most evocative way to arrive
in the most evocative of destinations.
Perhaps something of this rich history was in the minds of the British
Council and Literature Across Frontiers when they dreamed up the Word
Express project that took place in October. This saw some 20 young
European writers embarking on trains in Ljubljana, Bucharest and
Sarajevo and winding through the Balkans, stopping off along the way
to give readings and supervise writing workshops. The three groups
joined up in Thessaloniki before starting out on the last leg to
Istanbul. Once there they met up with a cluster of Turkish writers and
spent five day attending various literary events and taking part in
the Istanbul Book Fair and the Tanpinar Literature Festival.
Harmony was not necessarily assured. After all, the participants
included writers from Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina, Turkey, Greece
and Armenia, Bulgaria and Israel ` states with a history of ethnic
violence or mutual hatred and distrust. Something of the region's
tangled animosities was hinted at by the novelist Ognjen SpahiÄ? who,
at one event, announced he would be reading one of his short stories
in his native Montenegrin: he then wryly pointed out that Montenegrin
is the same as Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian but with the break up of
the Balkans his countrymen felt they had to have their own language
too.
Of course, part of the idea of Word Express is to use the lingua
franca of literature to calm national antagonisms. And among the
individual authors themselves it was remarkably ` and speedily `
effective. Days of close proximity - and the rocking of the trains -
turned a disparate selection of poets, novelists, playwrights and
filmmakers into an enthusiastic phalanx of mutually supportive
writers. Their enthusiasm was for each other as well as their shared
project.
The project itself, while encompassing all those noble but nebulous
supranational aims (building trust and understanding, encouraging
collaboration, generating dialogue etc), is also designed to produce
more concrete results. The writers have been pairing up and the
results of their collaborations will be published as part of stage two
next year ` new stories and dialogues emerging from the trip,
translations of each other's work, film and video pieces. The profile
of the project, it is hoped, will also help attract publishers for the
other informal spin-offs that will emerge along the way.
Although this seems a relatively modest outcome for such a big venture
this is not, according to the Turkish novelist BariÅ? MüstecaphoÄ?lu,
the way to judge its success. As he points out, Britain has exported
the idea that the `creative industries' have real economic heft. And
in Eastern Europe it is a valuable commodity because writers and
artists there have far less access to funding and support than their
British peers. Word Express, thinks MüstecaphoÄ?lu and others, is not
just about introducing writers to each other but about introducing
them to the decision makers of their own countries and showing that,
whatever the worth of their work, they nevertheless have real economic
worth.
As a final destination it is harder to get to than Istanbul but Word
Express has at least put it on track.
Twenty European writers recently hopped on a train to Istanbul. What
were they up to, wonders Michael Prodger
By Michael Prodger
Daily Telegraph/UK
Published: 5:30AM GMT 06 Dec 2009
The most evocative of destinations: Istanbul Photo: GETTY
The journey to Istanbul by train has a venerable and generally
murderous literary history: as Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient
Express, Graham Greene's Stamboul Train, Ian Fleming's From Russia
With Love found their way on to the bookshelves they also chugged into
the subconscious. While the Orient Express covered the route with a
thick layer of glamour and romance these novels added a frisson of
danger. They ensured that emerging from a sleeper car in the Sirkeci
station, the pink faux-palace on the edge of the Golden Horn that
marks the end of the line, is still the most evocative way to arrive
in the most evocative of destinations.
Perhaps something of this rich history was in the minds of the British
Council and Literature Across Frontiers when they dreamed up the Word
Express project that took place in October. This saw some 20 young
European writers embarking on trains in Ljubljana, Bucharest and
Sarajevo and winding through the Balkans, stopping off along the way
to give readings and supervise writing workshops. The three groups
joined up in Thessaloniki before starting out on the last leg to
Istanbul. Once there they met up with a cluster of Turkish writers and
spent five day attending various literary events and taking part in
the Istanbul Book Fair and the Tanpinar Literature Festival.
Harmony was not necessarily assured. After all, the participants
included writers from Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina, Turkey, Greece
and Armenia, Bulgaria and Israel ` states with a history of ethnic
violence or mutual hatred and distrust. Something of the region's
tangled animosities was hinted at by the novelist Ognjen SpahiÄ? who,
at one event, announced he would be reading one of his short stories
in his native Montenegrin: he then wryly pointed out that Montenegrin
is the same as Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian but with the break up of
the Balkans his countrymen felt they had to have their own language
too.
Of course, part of the idea of Word Express is to use the lingua
franca of literature to calm national antagonisms. And among the
individual authors themselves it was remarkably ` and speedily `
effective. Days of close proximity - and the rocking of the trains -
turned a disparate selection of poets, novelists, playwrights and
filmmakers into an enthusiastic phalanx of mutually supportive
writers. Their enthusiasm was for each other as well as their shared
project.
The project itself, while encompassing all those noble but nebulous
supranational aims (building trust and understanding, encouraging
collaboration, generating dialogue etc), is also designed to produce
more concrete results. The writers have been pairing up and the
results of their collaborations will be published as part of stage two
next year ` new stories and dialogues emerging from the trip,
translations of each other's work, film and video pieces. The profile
of the project, it is hoped, will also help attract publishers for the
other informal spin-offs that will emerge along the way.
Although this seems a relatively modest outcome for such a big venture
this is not, according to the Turkish novelist BariÅ? MüstecaphoÄ?lu,
the way to judge its success. As he points out, Britain has exported
the idea that the `creative industries' have real economic heft. And
in Eastern Europe it is a valuable commodity because writers and
artists there have far less access to funding and support than their
British peers. Word Express, thinks MüstecaphoÄ?lu and others, is not
just about introducing writers to each other but about introducing
them to the decision makers of their own countries and showing that,
whatever the worth of their work, they nevertheless have real economic
worth.
As a final destination it is harder to get to than Istanbul but Word
Express has at least put it on track.