Croatian Book Night 2024: Looking at books through the prism of a cataclysm
On 23 April 2024, marking this year’s World Book and Copyright Day and Croatian Book Day (22 April), the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) will host the opening of the 13th edition of the Croatian Book Night.
As Croatia’s annual national programme focusing on the popularisation of reading and promotion of books, the Croatian Book Night will again promote a wider public debate on the social status of the book and the importance of values associated with it in the contemporary society.
Books as a means for averting cataclysms?
Always attempting to respond to current social developments, the organisers of the 2024 Croatian Book Night decided to address through this year’s Night’s programme the sentiment among the global public of a looming cataclysm, brought about by the current developments across the world. Although humankind has feared, anticipated and been fascinated by the apocalyptic visions of all kinds since time immemorial, today’s ongoing armed conflicts and the threat they pose of sparking off a global war along with the disastrous impact of excessive and irresponsible use of Earth’s natural resources by way of exacerbating climate change on human society and the entire living world presently make doomsday dreads rather substantiated.
Regardless of the basis for such uneasy prospects, they have always presented us with a choice, at whose core lies the decision we (have to) make of whether we will live our lives meaningfully and do our part in making the world a better place or duck our responsibility and without resistance surrender to decadence and/or fatalism. And literature and where one stood in relation to it always played a role here.
Literature – a signpost to a brighter future
Through its programme, the 2024 Croatian Book Night wishes to offer a perspective on collectively handling the global crises through spotlighting books as a priceless resource in finding consolation as well as inspiration and motivation for taking action. By spotlighting the answers in literature to modern challenges and threats as well as the messages it has when it comes to dealing with pseudofacts and fake news, this edition of the Croatian Book Night wishes to encourage us to make changes which will favourably affect the outcomes ahead of us.
In the words which The Lord of the Rings’ wise wizard Gandalf told to Frodo, when the young hero felt like the task he had been given was too much for him – All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. Also, the fact that Marko Marulić, “the father of Croatian literature”, wrote Judita, his most significant work and the cornerstone of Croatian literature, precisely at the time when Dalmatian cities, including Marulić’s native Split, were violently attacked by the Ottoman invaders, and with his unique rendering of the biblical story of a brave widow put across to his contemporaries an encouraging message amid the atmosphere of insecurity and fear has direct bearing on today’s circumstances.
Wishing to put books into spotlight as valuable signposts and landmarks in the efforts of humankind to rise to present challenges and overcome related threats, this year’s Croatian Book Night programme will focus on extracting the most inspiring morals, ideas and points that literature has to offer in this context.
The Year of Marko Marulić and other great anniversaries
Apart from marking the 500th anniversary of the birth of Marko Marulić, the Night’s programme will also highlight the 150th anniversary of the birth of a six-time nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka and 70 years since the first publication of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
Register your programme and join the 2024 Croatian Book Night
The National and University Library in Zagreb invites everyone interested to join the 2024 Croatian Book Night by organising a programme spotlighting books and reading in the light of the Night’s theme and registering it by 22 March 2024. Registration will remain open after 22 March, but only the organisers of the programmes registered until then will receive the Night’s promotional materials.
Apart from libraries, the wide variety of participants in the Night’s past editions also included bookstores, antiquarian bookshops, schools, kindergartens, senior citizen’s homes, hospitals, prisons, castles, cafés, trains, orchards, public squares, even a brewery and a mushroom picking site. Regardless of the location and the way in which your programme will focus on books and reading, we look forward to adding it to another nationwide celebration of the written word and all the joys and benefits associated with it.
The organisers of the Croatian Book Night programme are the Publishers and Booksellers Association of the Croatian Chamber of Economy, National and University Library in Zagreb, Zagreb City Libraries, books-and-literature-oriented e-zine and web portal Moderna vremena, Croatian Publishers Licensing Society (ZANA), book market-focused association Knjižni blok – Inicijativa za knjigu and the Croatian Association of School Librarians.