Those trains are more than a gimmick, since they’re referring to the central theme of the festival, “On the Move”. Travelling and literature seem to be intertwined, and far from only in travel literature. Writers create their own fictional world into which they invite the reader. Every good book is like going on an expedition. Travelling into someone’s head is discovering new ground. Many of the guests, like Danish writers Jens Christian Grøndahl and Dutch author Connie Palmen, address this.

But “On the Move” also covers real travelling. Passa Porta has invited some frequent flyers to talk about their journeys: the Dutch Ramsey Nasr and Abdelkader Benali, for instance, and the Bosnian Sasa Stanicic. And the festival asked Flemish author Anne Provoost to swap houses with her Walloon colleague Alain Bertrand. They’ll meet for the first time in the flesh at the festival and talk about their experiences.

On the final day of the festival is a writers' parcours: 20 spots in Brussels will be filled with writers reciting, reading, debating, being interviewed and challenging their audience. But the previous days are not merely a warm-up. Letters to Europe, on Friday in the KVS, is an evening with more than 20 authors from all corners of the world, who will contemplate on Fortress Europe, still seen as the continent of milk and honey. Rightfully so, or not?

And on Saturday some of the big names of the festival will gather in De Munt to tackle the main On the Move theme: Péter Esterházy, mainstay of Hungarian literature; Frenchman Philippe Claudel (also known as the director of Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long); Italian Sandro Veronesi (Quiet Chaos) and more.

It’s difficult to imagine such a widely varied literature festival – more than 10 languages will be heard, translation into Dutch and French will always be offered – in a city other than Brussels, a crossroads of cultures and a multi-ethnic metropolis on a human scale.

Pictured: Egyptian author and activist Nawal El Saadawi at the previous Passa Porta Festival

Passa Porta Festival

24-27 March

Across Brussels

www.passaporta.be

Jens Christian Grøndahl
The Danish author Jens Christian Grøndahl, whose work is hardly available in English, is one of the two guests of honour of Passa Porta. On Thursday night in Passa Porta he gives the inaugural address, in which he, being not only a novelist, but also a philosopher and essayist, will reflect on the festival's theme "On the Move". He has promised to speak about the reader as a traveller gone astray, trying to find their way home by exploring the world through literature. You can also hear him in De Munt on Saturday and in Le Vaudeville on Sunday.

Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature - the only Turkish writer to receive that award - is the other guest of honour of the festival. The author of Snow, The Black Book and The White Castle will be closing the Passa Porta Festival on Sunday night in the big room of Bozar. He'll be talking about the relationship between Turkey and Europe, but he'll also ponder the ability of a novelist to empathise with others and the political implications of such actions. Regarding the controversy in nationalist Turkish circles about his work, this might turn out to be an explosive lecture.

David Mitchell
In his highly praised novels - Cloud Atlas and, most recently, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - British author David Mitchell criss-crosses the globe (and jumps through time). He has lived in Italy and Japan, so he's close to the central theme of the festival. His books are daring constructions that never feel like merely constructions, since they engage the reader strongly on an emotional level. Mitchell will be in De Munt on Saturday and interviewed in KVS on Sunday.

Erwin Mortier
The Flemish author of amazing novels such as Godenslaap and Mijn tweede huid (My Fellow Skin) created the book Niemand weet dat ik een mens ben (Nobody Knows That I'm Human) - about underage refugees - together with photographer Lieve Blancquaert. On Sunday, they invite some of the book's subjects to the Begijnhofkerk. A bit earlier that day, in the nearby film school Rits, Mortier reads - in Dutch and French - from his first novel Marcel.