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The Nordic Council of Ministers Office in Lithuania proudly presents the festival Vilnius Alibi, the first international crime fiction festival in Lithuania. The festival is organized on November 8-12, 2005 in Vilnius.
The festival brings to you famous detective authors and presents a wide program of events dedicated to crime fiction. Ten authors from the Nordic and Baltic countries and Russia are coming to the festival:
Arne Dahl (Sweden), Leif Davidsen (Denmark), Raidas Dubrė (Lithuania), Leena Lehtolainen (Finland), Birutė Mackonytė (Lithuania), Aleksandra Marinina (Russia), Jo Nesbø (Norway), Eeva Park (Estonia), Jānis Ivars Stradiņš (Latvia) and Árni Thórarinsson (Iceland).
The purpose of the Vilnius Alibi Festival is to introduce the Nordic crime fiction tradition to the general Lithuanian audience, to encourage Lithuanian publishers to publish Nordic crime fiction, and to further develop crime writing in the Baltic Sea Region by igniting discussions among the writers. We hope that events of the festival will contribute to popularization of crime fiction among readers, too.
The Nordic countries have a strong tradition of crime fiction. The genre is popular among the general public and the big names hit the bestseller charts with every title.
Critics acknowledge that, at its best, Nordic crime writing reveals the harder and darker sides of our societies. But this does not mean that Nordic crime novels are an analysis of criminal statistics or pamphlets with a social agenda. They are first and foremost literature, with all the possibilities and variations that exist in any literary tradition.
To expand the discussion, we have invited writers not only from the five Nordic countries, but also from all the Baltic countries, and Russia. Russia has a crime fiction tradition of its own, which differs from the Nordic one and which dates from pre-Soviet times. Russian crime fiction is popular in the Baltic countries as well.
There is, however, one thing common to all the writers of the Vilnius Alibi Festival: a high degree of professional ambition and responsibility. There is violence in these books, but if there is entertainment, the violence is not the entertainment.
Crime novels are often very tightly anchored to a specific place. Some of our guests offer good examples: Arne Dahl’s stories are vivid descriptions of Stockholm, while Leena Lehtolainen has immortalized the suburban city of Espoo, next to Helsinki. Alexandra Marinina’s love for Moscow is clearly present in her writing, and Leif Davidsen’s heroes find themselves in places like Madrid and Berlin, in addition to Copenhagen.
Maybe because of this tradition, we were bold enough to ask the writers for short crime stories with a connection to Vilnius. Some of them kindly agreed (and we respect the decision of those who didn’t). The stories will be published during the festival, both as a book, called Vilnius Alibi, and on the homepage of the festival on the Internet.
Vilnius is present in the stories – sometimes concretely, like in the form of a building with a secret history, sometimes from a distance, as a mysterious postcard or an unintentional souvenir.
And we don’t want to conceal our sly hope that the visit of the writers to Vilnius may inspire them to include this fabulous city in their future texts.
For all who are interested in opening their minds to the intriguing worlds of crime fiction, we offer events of the Vilnius Alibi Festival:
meetings with the authors,
seminars and discussions on crime fiction,
interactive detective mystery on the Internet In the Shadow of the Duke,
crime film section “Crime and Punishment” in the Scanorama Film Festival,
collection of short stories Vilnius Alibi, written by the participating authors,
crime readings on the Lithuanian radio Klasika
and other entertainment in detective style.
We wish you the best detective impressions,
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2005. Nordic Council of Ministers Office in Lithuania. All rights reserved e-solution: gaumina