Book lovers, rejoice: Popular authors and journalists will descend on Jerusalem as the Third International Writers Festival takes over the city from May 13 to18. The event, which occurs biennially, will be attended by at least 15 internationally acclaimed authors. The festivals date and location, in the Mishkenot Shaananim neighborhood, were officially announced on Monday. Outstanding guests listed to appear include Indian writer and diplomat Vikas Swarup, author of "Q & A" (which was made into the Oscar-winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire"), Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon ("The Question of Bruno: Stories," "The Lazarus Project"), Tracy Chevalier ("Girl with a Pearl Earring"), and Howard Jacobson (winner of the Man Booker Prize for "The Finkler Question"). Also on hand will be American literary heavyweights Gary Shteyngart ("Super Sad True Love Story") and Aimee Bender ("The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"), British suspense novelist Tom Rob Smith ("Child 44"), Argentine writer Claudia Pineiro, Dutch writers Herman Koch and Arnon Grunberg, Italian Lorenza Mazzetti, Irishman Gerard ODonovan, Icelander Solveig Eggerz, Hungarian Laszlo Krasznahorka, and Algerian Boualem Sansal. Of course, veteran Israeli writers will also have a significant presence. Sabra scribblers at the event will include David Grossman ("To the End of the Land," Someone to Run With), A. B. Yehoshua ("A Woman in Jerusalem"), Aharon Appelfeld, Eli Amir, Meir Shalev ("A Pigeon and a Boy"), Eshkol Nevo, Etgar Keret ("The Nimrod Flipout"), Zruya Shalev, Hagai Linik (recent winner of the Sapir Prize for Literature), and others. Festival events will include joint discussions between Israeli and foreign writers, as well as theatrical and musical presentations. A special film will be shown that focuses on the movie versions of novels written by some authors attending the festival. Festival Director Tal Kramer worked jointly with artistic director and Hotam production company CEO Tzila Hayun on the festival program. In the previous festival, tickets for a dialogue between internationally renowned writer Paul Auster and Israeli writer David Grossman were sold out weeks in advance. Although the festival this year will not host someone on the level of Auster, this year's list does includes some of the hottest names in literature today (among them Hemon, Koch, Grunberg and Smith). In an unusual twist, no German writers will attend the festival this year, despite a growing bond between Israeli and German writers. Also missing from this year's festival will be nonfictional and biographical writers, despite the tremendous popularity of those fields.
