Speakers: Natasha Lehrer, Daniel Trilling, Olga Grjasnowa

Chair: Jo Glanville

© Blake Ezra

Part of the Library’s Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfus to Today exhibition events series.

In this event, the panel, all contributors to a recent volume, Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism (Jo Glanville ed., 2021), will consider the situation with respects to antisemitism in various countries in Europe today. More than 75 years after the Holocaust, antisemitism is on the rise again on the left as well as the far right. Our speakers have expertise on antisemitism in France, Britain and Germany, and amongst the topics that they will consider are recent manifestations of antisemitism in these countries; the connections that current day antisemitism has with antisemitism in the past, and the reasons why antisemitism persists.

About the speakers:

Olga Grjasnowa’s debut novel Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt was awarded the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize, the Hermann Lenz Grant and the Anna Seghers Prize. Her novels Die juristische Unschaerfe einer Ehe, Gott ist nicht schuechtern and Der verlorene Sohn followed in 2014, 2017 and 2020. All her books have been dramatised for the stage and translated into a total of 15 languages.

Natasha Lehrer is a writer, translator and editor. Her journalism and book reviews have appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Haaretz, and Fantastic Man, among others. Her full-length translations include Suite for Barbara Loden, by Nathalie Léger (Les Fugitives / Dorothy) Memories of Low Tide, by Chantal Thomas (Pushkin Press), Chinese Spies, by Roger Faligot (Hurst), and A Call for Revolution, by the Dalai Lama (Rider).

Daniel Trilling is and award-winning journalist and author. He has recently been short-listed for the 2022 Orwell Journalism Prize. His latest book, Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe, won Italy’s inaugural Libri contro la Fame (“Books against Hunger”) literary prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. Trilling is also currently a regular contributor to The Guardian’s Long Read and Opinion sections and writes for the London Review of Books, among other publications.

Event guidelines for those joining online:

1. The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.

2. Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).

3. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.

4. The event will be recorded for the Library’s YouTube channel and will be shared at a later date.