The African Book Festival Berlin 2023 which happens from August 25-27 disinvited its curator Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini on March 14, 2023.
The African Book Festival Berlin has been happening in the German city since 2018. Apart from the two Covid years, the festival has run to much success with many new markets for African writers being introduced.
In January, the festival organisers announced that their curator for 2023 would be Mauritanian Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini. His memoir Guantánamo Diary (Canongate Books, 2017) first published in 2015 became an international bestseller. While still in captivity, he wrote the novel The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga (Ohio University Press, 2021) where he takes his reader on an epic journey through the geographical and spiritual terrain of the Sahara. Slahi Houbeini was to put together a programme that included Mauritanian poetry, but also readings, concerts, panel discussions, and film.
On Monday, March 14, the festival organisers revealed that they had taken over the role of curating the festival. Here is their statement in full;
InterKontinental e.V. takes over the artistic direction of the African Book Festival 2023
The association InterKontinental e.V., organiser of the African Book Festival, will take over the event’s artistic direction this year and has submitted a request in this vein to its funding institution, the Hauptstadtkulturfonds. The association wants to prevent the festival from being affected by the ongoing discussions about Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini, who was supposed to serve as curator.
The Peace Prize winner, human rights activist and writer has been subjected to serious but unsubstantiated accusations in the German press and public in these past weeks, which have since led to numerous attacks on the festival itself.
As an important and unique platform for African perspectives in Germany, the African Book Festival sees itself as responsible for giving expression to African voices in many different ways.
In order to place literature and not individuals at the centre of the festival as usual, the organisers, after careful deliberation, consider it right at this time to end the cooperation with Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini as artistic director and to develop the 2023 programme from within the association instead.
We very much regret this step, because from an artistic point of view there is still nothing to be said against working together with Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini. However, out of a sense of responsibility towards our association, its staff, festival writers and visitors, we see no other way to ensure that the festival can be held safely.
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