Conrad Festival 2025

The Conrad Festival is the biggest international literary event in Poland and one of the biggest in Europe. It presents world literature from all corners of the globe rooted in various cultures and growing out of diverse experiences, as well as works by Polish authors representing various backgrounds and generations. Authors from all parts of Poland and the world come to Krakow to work on the art of translation and mutual understanding again and again. This year’s motto of the festival is ‘Radical Hope’.‘Plenty Coups responded to the collapse of his civilisation with radical hope. What makes this hope radical is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is.’ – this concept described by Jonathan Lear will be the theme of the 17th Conrad Festival. In the essay Radical Hope, the philosopher evokes the fate of the Crow Indian tribe under the leadership of chief Plenty Coups in the face of the complete annihilation of their culture during the colonisation of North America – a starting point for a fundamental question: what happens to people experiencing the end of the world they have known so far as a result of wars, natural disasters, the diagnosis of an incurable disease or even the loss of their jobs. We will search for the answers together with writers from different corners of the globe: Chloe Dalton (Raising Hare), Kamel Daoud (The Meursault Investigation and Houri), Yan Ge (Strange Beasts of China and Elsewhere), Abdulrazak Gurnah (Afterlives), Vincenzo Latronico (Perfection), Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (Scar and DJ Bambi), Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven) or Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn). Polish guests include Małgorzata Halber, Weronika Murek, Łukasz Orbitowski, Ishbel Szatrawska and Ziemowit Szczerek. Discussions on literature will be held at the Potocki Palace during ‘Reading Lessons’ aimed at young people and excluded groups (including people with hearing difficulties), which will be hosted by Agnieszka D