It's just weekend upon weekend of bookish loveliness at the moment - feels like the Stoke Newington Literary Festival will barely have finished before the London Review Bookshop hosts its annual World Literature Weekend.
This year's theme is 'language and exile', with lots of opportunities to meet writers who have changed their country through choice or compulsion. Congolese novelist Alain Mabanckou (pictured) kicks everything off on Friday talking to Helen Stevenson about his prize-winning work; other writers appearing over the weekend include Hamid Ismailov, Elias Khoury, George Szirtes and Ahdaf Soueif. A rather Londony time should be had by everyone at the chat between Chinese poet Yang Lian, who's just published a collection entitled Lee Valley Poems, and Iain Sinclair. And if you ever wondered about how translated writing keeps its style and voice, or how local gags come across in another language, Saturday's live translation event is for you.
Tickets cost £8 (£5 concessions), but if you follow @lrbshop on Twitter you'll have the chance to win some: each day they'll select one of the events - just tweet the name of any WLW speaker and a question you'd like to ask them (use the tag #WLW2010) and the most interesting will win a pair of tickets to the day's chosen event. Sound fair? We think so.
World Literature Weekend runs 18th-20th June at the London Review Bookshop, British Museum and Birkbeck College. Tickets £8 / £5. For more information see the London Review Bookshop website.
