FROM FESTIVAL TO FESTIVAL

If the Hay Festival were a poem, it would be an epic like “Paradise Lost”—a tale of towering ambition drawing its references from the four corners of the earth. What began in 1987 as a small event on the Welsh-English border now attracts 90,000 visitors and has thriving offshoots in Segovia, Alhambra, Cartagena and Nairobi; this year the Maldives and Zacatecas in Mexico are being colonised, plus Beirut, where 39 young Arab writers gathered in April.

On home turf, the star turns this year include Tom Stoppard, Hilary Mantel, Roddy Doyle, Bill Bryson, Nadine Gordimer and Zadie Smith. Hay also embraces film-makers, artists and musicians, arguing that they too can “do that incredibly sexy thing—renew our sense of wonder”. Last year it found room for Immodesty Blaize, who does that incredibly sexy thing, burlesque dancing. But then, what’s ambition for if it isn’t naked? The Guardian Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye is on through June 6th.

From there, perhaps fly over to the Prague Writers’ Festival (from June 6th to 10th). “Heresy and Rebellion” is this year’s theme, with a special tribute to Albert Camus, 50 years after his death. No fewer than three Nobel prize-winners will be participating: the poet Derek Walcott, the playwright Gao Xingjian, and the novelist and current laureate Herta Müller. There will also be a strong North African presence—Bahaa Taher, Assia Debar and Fernando Arrabal—not to mention Scotland’s Iain Banks and the local hero Michal Ajvaz.

~ ANTHONY GARDNER

Picture credit: Peter Curbishley (via Flickr)