Amazing travellers

International Books Festival

Writers, intellectuals, artists, philosophers, historians - the festival taking place in Saint-Malo brings together men and women from all over Europe to debate the question of European identity.

Europe was the stuff of dreams. Not any longer. The rise of the far right, inward-looking policies, rejection of others, the convenient "forgetting" of Europe during election campaigns - the European dream is evaporating. Europe is growing more distant because it no longer stands for a dream, an ideal or a hope. Europe is becoming elusive, in short, because it lacks soul - in other words, the desire to be together, a concept of itself broad enough to create a common impetus.

Economic and institutional foundations aren't enough; the new Europe will be cultural or it won't exist. Europe is first a collection of values: a certain idea of humanity, of its rights, its powers of creation. This is a set of values that the Amazing Travellers festival has helped defend by creating, with the Centre André Malraux, in September 2000, the first Rencontres européennes du livre in Sarajevo. A symbolic place, as European values were (and still are) challenged there.