European Literature Days 2026 | Panel Discussion: Too Loud a Loneliness
06:30 PM, Thurs 07 May 2026
Goethe-Institut Hà Nội
58 Nguyễn Thái Học, Ba Đình, Hà Nội
Registration link
From the organizer:
The great German philosopher Hannah Arendt once observed: “Loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.” Loneliness is no longer merely a private agony; it has become an epidemic of the modern age. In the digital era, the illusion of borderless, global connectivity paradoxically breeds individuals who are more isolated and melancholic than ever before.
Loneliness arises when individuals are severed from intimate ties and alienated from a shared, now-shattered world, leaving them adrift in search of existential meaning.
Abandonment in the face of death, the uprootedness of losing one’s homeland, the unspoken trauma of sexual assault, or simply the inability to bond with one’s closest kin: these are the myriad faces of loneliness.
This panel brings together a diverse chorus of writers whose characters repress their emotions, allowing their private agonies to scream in silence. Yet, even within the thick fog of such trauma, a profound yearning for connection and rebirth continues to flicker.
This event is part of European Literature Days, an annual literary festival organised by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in Vietnam.
About the panelists:
Sasha Marianna Salzmann was born in Volgograd, Russia, and at the age of ten migrated to Germany with their family, where they have become one of the most relevant voices on the theatre and literary scene. They studied Theatre and Literature at the University of Hildesheim and later specialized in playwriting at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Their theatrical work, acclaimed internationally, stands out for its unique treatment of universal topics such as memory, identity or the migratory experience. It has been translated into more than twenty languages and awarded with Theatre Prize of the Academy of Arts 2020 and the Kleist-Preis literary prize in 2024. Both of their novels Beside Myself (2017) and Glorious people (2021) were nominated for the best German Book Prize and received the Literaturhäuser Prize and Hermann-Hesse-Literaturpreis in 2022. Sasha Salzmann also collaborates with various German media, curates festivals and has been a resident at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.
Rebecca Watson (she/her) is a novelist. Her debut novel little scratch (2021) was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize and was adapted into a play in London. Her second novel I Will Crash was published in 2024 to critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Watson’s non-fiction has been published widely, including in the Guardian, Granta and British Vogue. In 2022, she presented a documentary for Radio 4 — where her short stories have also aired. She is a commissioning editor and columnist for FT Weekend and lives in London. The Vietnamese edition of little scratch (XƯỚC XÁT) is published by Coral Books.
Miku Sophie Kühmel was born in Gotha, Germany in 1992. They studied briefly in New York and longer in Berlin, where they now live and work. After publications in anthologies and magazines, their debut novel “Kintsugi” was published in 2019, for which Miku was awarded the Jürgen Ponto Foundation Literature Prize 2019 and the “aspekte” Literature Prize 2019. They have received scholarships from the Alfred Döblin House of the Academy of Arts, among others. In 2022, their second novel “Triskele” was published, with which Miku was nominated for the Clemens Brentano Prize 2023. After publishing their first anthology „Brüste“ with Linus Giese, working in several residencies such as Reykjavík (with the Goethe Institute of Denmark) or Vienna and diving into the world of theatre with the Deutsches Theater atelier project „Fellwechsel“, Miku published their latest novel „Hannah“ in 2025. It was particularly well received in the press, or as FAZ put it: „Kühmel gives Hannah Höch back one half of her life.”
Peter Simon Altmann is an Austrian author. Born in Salzburg Austria 1968, studied theology and philosophy. Collaboration in various theater productions in Salzburg and Vienna. Working as a writer since 1999. Several working stays in Japan, Korea and China, supported by the Austrian embassies in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing and others. Altmann writes novels, short stories, poems and essays and is a member of PEN-International Austria.
About the moderator:
Quyen Nguyen is a Doctor of English literature and an independent researcher and critic. She holds a PhD in English literature from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore with a dissertation on James Joyce. Her research interests include literary theory, James Joyce, Irish literature, modernism, postmodernism, translation studies, and contemporary literature. Her works have been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Quyen Nguyen is also an English-Vietnamese translator with more than 14 years of experience; her published translations include “What we talk about when we talk about love” by Raymond Carver (co-translated), “Atonement” by Ian McEwan, “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides.
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