Now in its 46th year, the Edinburgh International Book Festival returns for two weeks this August, bringing together authors and literary fans from across the globe. We spoke to the festival’s CEO Jenny Niven about the issues this year’s theme, ‘Repair’, aims to shed light on.
The theme this year is Repair, ‘which seeks to explore the many things around us which feel broken, and how we might seek to fix them’. What inspired the choice of this theme for the 2025 festival, and how do you see it resonating with today’s audiences?
We believe that dialogue and discussion are a positive and hopeful thing in and of themselves. It can feel at the moment like there is just an onslaught of difficult news and irresolvable conflict.
But amongst all of that there are also brilliant thinkers and great ideas in the world about how we can move forward, and how we might be able to do things differently. So our programme aims to showcase those, some of the terrific books that help convey those ideas, and also to remind people that getting offline and being face-to-face with other people – even ones you don’t always agree with – can be a fun, uplifting, and even cathartic thing to do.
