26 October 2012 Thursday at the Conrad Festival

The fourth day of the Conrad Festival was opened by Michał Olszowski, who analysed a text by Jean Hatzfeld, a French reporter and war correspondent who was a guest at the Festival two years ago, with secondary school students. At noon, Jacek Dehnel and Tomasz Fiałkowski discussed Saturn, the latest book by Dehnel. When the meeting with Dorota Masłowska started at 2 p.m., it was clear that there would be an attendance record: the rooms of the Festival Centre could barely hold the public listening to Masłowska talking for over an hour about her latest novel, Kochanie, zabiłam nasze koty (Darling, I killed the cats). The meetings with Eustachy Rylski, Robert D. Kaplan and Jeanette Winterson also gathered large crowds. “It is amazing: looking at rooms full of the enchanted public, I am sure that the claims on the decline in reading are far too exaggerated,” Izabela Helbin, the director of the Krakow Festival Office that co-organises the festival with the Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation, was happy to observe.

See the gallery of pictures from yesterday’s festival events.