Claudio Magris and Norman Manea

What role does madness play in modern life? In art? The narrator of Claudio Magris' recent book, Blindly, is a pazzo lucido, a lucid madman, whose single narrative voice is populated by various characters. He is Jorgen Jorgenson, the nineteenth-century adventurer who became king of Iceland but was condemned to forced labor in the Antipodes. He is also Comrade Cippico, a militant anit-Communist, imprisoned for years in Tito's gulag on the island Goli Otok. And he is the many partisans, prisoners, sailors and stowaways who have encountered the perils of travel, war and exploration. A shifting monologue - part confession, part psychiatric session - Blindly is a voyage into the cavernous depths of the twentieth century.

Romania's Norman Manea, himself a literary giant, will join Magris on stage to discuss literature, philosophy and exile.