Jewish Book Week

I've been sent details of an event called Jewish Book Week, which I'm glad to mention. It runs from Saturday 24 February, in London and elsewhere.

Among the events, Martin Amis is in discussion with Christopher Hitchens on 25 February. Also on that day is a panel discussion, including David Aaronovitch, of an issue I'm much concerned with at the moment, namely the subject of taboos and free speech. Under the same auspices, but obviously not in the same week, the Austrian novelist Eva Menasse is giving a talk at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London on 8 March. Her novel Vienna has recently been published in English (disclosure: the translator is my mother), and it's an accomplished work. (It's on the long-list for The Independent's Foreign Fiction Prize.) Ms Menasse generated some highly worthwhile political controversy last summer when she co-authored an article for Süddeutsche Zeitung (in English here) in which she made pertinent observations about the German Left and Israel. She has the honour of being vilified by the web site of the racist faker David Irving, but I'll not trouble to give a link for this.