European Literature Days 2026 | Echoes of the Present: Navigating Trauma, Tech and Tomorrow

11 AM – 05 PM, Sat 09 May 2026
10 AM – 05:30 PM Sun 10 May 2026
Goethe-Institut Hanoi
58 Nguyễn Thái Học, Ba Đình, Hà Nội

From the organizer:

“Echoes of the Present – Navigating Trauma, Tech, and Tomorrow” approaches literature as a seismograph of its time: a space in which the tremors of history, technology, and inner life co-exist and resonate. Opening with selections from the 2025 Longlists for the German Book Prize and the German Non-Fiction Prize, and culminating in “works in progress,” the exhibition gathers voices that do more than merely reflect the present; they interrogate its multi-layered echoes amidst constant fractures and perpetual shifts.

The works gathered in the first section confront directly the complex crises of our era: from tracing the legacies of intergenerational trauma and exile in the writings of Jehona Kicaj and Lena Schätte, to inhabiting life amid ecological collapse and the neoliberal architectures of mental healthcare in works by Fiona Sironic and Thomas Melle. Others move further, questioning the very ethics of storytelling – who owns a tragedy, and how colonial gazes distort real-life trauma into art – as explored in texts by Kaleb Erdmann and Dorothee Elmiger. Uniting all these texts is a profound tension: a struggle to reclaim agency and autonomy in the face of overwhelming systems.

The latent structures of power shaping our futures often operate beyond perception: in the non-fiction section, Digital Colonialism by Ingo Dachwitz and Sven Hilbig exposes the global data economy as an extension of asymmetrical dependencies characteristic of neo-colonialism, or Woman as a human being recounts the origins of humankind from a female perspective, one long absent and only brought into critical focus in recent decades.

Texts, however, persist through movements that transcend geographic and linguistic borders. In the subsequent section, German-language authors such as Robert Walser and Hans Fallada are reborn in Vietnamese, opening up cross-cultural spaces of resonance. Here, the historical melancholia of Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, alongside Byung-Chul Han’s diagnoses of modernity, serve as testaments to the profound universality of trauma and alienation.

Yet, literature is never a finished entity; it is perpetually in a state of becoming. In the final exhibition space, visitors enter an interactive laboratory featuring unpublished Vietnamese translations of works by Max Frisch, Judith Schalansky, Lutz Seiler, and Clemens J. Setz, to name a few. Presented in their raw state, these excerpts expose literature as an ongoing process – still forming, still elusive, completed only in the act of reading, where translation emerges as a probing effort toward an ever-receding wholeness.

Because each text is a palimpsest – a layered manuscript bearing the traces of multiple temporalities – we invite you to step into this ever-shifting archive and discover how these authors are drafting the blueprints for their futures, and for ours.

The exhibition is part of European Literature Days and is initiated and co organized by Goethe-Institut Vietnam and Frankfurter Buchmesse.

About Frankfurter Buchmesse:

Once a year Frankfurter Buchmesse turns into the world capital of ideas. It is the most important international trade fair for publishing and content of all kinds – from novels and children’s books to scientific databases. Here, experts from global publishing meet partners from the technology industry and related creative industries such as film and games. Thus, it is the hub of the international rights and licensing trade, and from here new cooperations and business models take their course.

At the same time, the fair is a major cultural event, attracting literature enthusiasts and making Frankfurt the centre of the international media world in October. Frankfurter Buchmesse GmbH, based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is the organisation behind Frankfurter Buchmesse. It is a subsidiary of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels).

Follow updates on event’s page.