We live in a time marked by crisis, war, and constant change—both in Europe and here in Israel. What can literature give us in such a moment? The European Night of Literature is a one-of-a-kind cultural evening celebrating the finest of today’s European writing. This year’s theme is love, in all its forms: romantic and familial, the love of nature, the divine, and beyond.
Throughout the evening, popular Israeli actors Yossi Marshek, Liron Ben-Shlush and Alon Friedman will bring these stories to life, reading selected short works that highlight the richness and diversity of European voices.
But literature is just the beginning. Join us for an aperitivo with Israeli publishers, workshop with illustrator Leia Muslow, captivating conversation with renowned writer Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, enjoy screenings of short films, and experience live music performed by Omer Goshen, that will carry the spirit of the night even further.
Don't miss any updates and follow our Facebook event page.
At this year’s European Night of Literature in Tel Aviv, Czech literature will also be featured – we will present J an Němec’s book Ways of Writing about Love, with excerpts read by Israeli actors.
Jan Němec
Jan Němec (1981) is a novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He studied sociology, religious studies and theatre dramaturgy. He has worked with the magazine Respekt and the Czech Radio. He is the managing editor at the monthly literary magazine Host and lectures at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. He has published a collection of poetry, První život (The First Life, 2007), a book of short stories, Hra pro čtyři ruce (A Game for Four Hands, 2009), and the novel Dějiny světla (A History of Light, 2013), which was awarded the EU Prize for Literature, has been translated into twelve languages, including English, Spanish and German. In 2019, he published his second novel, Možnosti milostného románu (Ways of Writing about Love).
In his novel Jan Němec exposes himself in an unprecedented manner as he examines the beginning, middle and end of a six-year relationship – his own. The book, which emerged from the need to understand what went wrong with him and his girlfriend, shows how the death of a relationship can spill over into the birth of a novel as a kind of self-preserving literary reincarnation. Ways of Writing about Love is enhanced by various narrative tricks and techniques, allusions to iconic works of prose, extracts from letters and news reports. This intimate and slightly controversial novel, where the author, narrator and central character meld into one, breaks all the rules of narration, testing the forms which prose can take.
Teresa Präauer - Cooking in the Wrong Century
Teresa Präauer is an Austrian author, artist and playwright. She studied German Literature and Language as well as Fine Arts in Austria and Germany. Being a columnist she regularly contributes to German newspapers and magazines, while also giving lectures at universities internationally. She has been awarded numerous prizes, among others the Erich-Fried-Prize (2017), the Ben-Witter-Prize (2022) and the prestigious Bremer Literaturpreis (2024). From March till April 2024 she was writer-in-residence at Deutsches Haus at New York University.
Photo (c) Martin Stöbich
Abigail Assor - Aussi Riche Que Le Roi
Abigail Assor was born in Casablanca in 1990 into a Jewish Moroccan family. At the age of seventeen, she moved to France to complete her studies, attending the prestigious Lycée Henri-IV in Paris before pursuing sociology and philosophy at the London School of Economics. Alongside a career in cultural communication and contemporary art, she has established herself as a novelist with a distinctive and powerful voice. Her debut novel, Aussi riche que le roi (2021), was widely acclaimed, becoming a finalist for the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and receiving several distinctions, including the Françoise Sagan Prize and the Lorientales Prize. In 2024, she published her second novel, La Nuit de David, a moving exploration of grief, memory, and sibling bonds, which was awarded the Prix Alain Spiess for a second novel. Today, Abigail Assor continues to engage with literature both through her writing and through literary events in schools, prisons, and public forums, as well as her contributions such as the literary horoscope for Le Nouvel Observateur.
Hengameh Yaghoobifarah - Dizziness
Hengameh Yaghoobifarah lives and works in Berlin. Together with Fatma Aydemir, Hengameh Yaghoobifarah published the highly acclaimed essay collection “Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum” (Your homeland is our nightmare) in 2019. In 2021, her debut novel “Ministerium der Träume” (Ministry of Dreams) was published by Blumenbar and became a SPIEGEL bestseller. This was followed in 2023 by the column collection “Habibitus,” which was shortlisted for the Kurt Tucholsky Prize. “Schwindel” is Hengameh Yaghoobifarah's second novel.
Jhumpa Lahiri - Roman Stories
Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London and raised in Rhode Island. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award and The New Yorker Debut of the Year. Her novel The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was selected as one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. In 2012, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and began writing in Italian.
Kotryna Zylė - Beloved Bones
Kotryna Zylė is a writer, illustrator, designer, and author of seven books. She has received multiple awards for her books and is well known to readers of Lithuanian children’s and young adults and adults' literature. A distinctive feature of her creative work is her incorporation of Lithuanian folklore and mythology within modern life.
Olga Tokarczuk - The Empusium
Eminent Polish writer, essayist, poet and screenwriter, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”.
She is the daughter of two teachers and a graduate of psychology at the University of Warsaw. Her first poetry collection was published in 1989, and about four years later her debut novel, The Journey of the Book-People, appeared. Over the years, she has written novels, poetry, short story collections, and essays, among them the bestsellers published in Israel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Ahuzat Bayit, 2021), The Books of Jacob: or A Great Journey Through Seven Borders, Five Languages and Three Major Religions (Carmel, 2020), Flights, which won the International Man Booker Prize in 2018 (Ahuzat Bayit, 2023) and Empusium (Ahuzat Bayit, 2025)
Tokarczuk’s distinctive books, all translated into Hebrew by Miriam Borenstein, combine fiction and history, earning her both critical acclaim and the love of readers.
David Rosh Pina - The Street Where Abraham's Dreams Lay
David Rosh Pina is a writer, screenwriter, blogger, holding a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has published fiction and children’s literature, including Yara and Her Grandfathers (2023) and Ensaio para Sonhadores Noctívagos (2005), and has contributed to literary magazines in Israel and Portugal. His creative work spans multiple platforms—he is the creator of the webseries pilot Ben (2024), writer for the Portuguese TV series Ilha das Cores, and director of the short film Metamorphosis (2003).
Alongside his writing, David is curating and hosting literary and artistic. His essays, stories, and commentary have appeared in outlets including The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and Medium. Fluent across cultures and disciplines, he bridges Portuguese, Israeli, and international perspectives through literature, cinema, and journalism.
Mircea Cărtărescu - Why Do We Love Women
Born in Bucharest in 1956, Mircea Cărtărescu is widely regarded as the most important contemporary Romanian writer and one of Europe’s major literary voices. A novelist, poet, essayist, and literary critic, he is also a journalist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Writers’ Union, Romanian PEN, and the European Cultural Parliament. Cărtărescu has published over 40 books and numerous articles. His work has been translated into more than 25 languages, establishing him as a singular voice of postmodern literature. Cărtărescu is the author of the monumental Orbitor trilogy and the novel Solenoid, a book that has brought him international recognition. Solenoid was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, The Financial Times, and Words Without Borders, and earned him the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (2023) and the International Dublin Literary Award (2024).
Ricardo Menéndez Salmón - Life in Flames
Ricardo Menéndez Salmón is one of the most respected writers in the Spanish literary scene. Born in Gijón (Asturias) in 1971, he studied Philosophy and has written thirteen novels, three books of short stories, a literary travelogue and essays concerning items like the history of painting, the relation between medicine and ethics, and the life and work of W. G. Sebald. He regularly publishes articles in newspapers and cultural and literary journals. His work has been translated into Catalan, French, German, Italian, Turkish, Dutch and Portuguese, and he has received numerous literary awards, as Biblioteca Breve (El Sistema), Premio Las Américas (Niños en el tiempo) and Premio Juan Rulfo (Los caballos azules). Praised unanimously by critics in Spain, his prose, rich and cultivated, has been described as having “a personal style, strong and close to expressionism” (El País); “a mature writer with the air of a classic” (ABC Cultural), “no writer today can compare to Ricardo Menéndez Salmón” (Qué Leer); “Goyesque imagery” (Revista de Letras), “the best of a generation of writers” (La Razón).
