Exploring Stories 25: Chorus of Many

Chorus of Many

Every society hums with a chorus of voices – but not all are heard equally. Some stories find their way into parliaments, talk shows, and schoolbooks. Others remain at the margins: untold, or told but unheard. In the Chorus of Many programme line, we examine how our attention is distributed – and what happens when the less-heard voices manage to break through. We hope to lower the volume of the majority, so we can truly listen to stories that strike us as new – or newly resonant – music.

Take the idea of a united Europe, for instance: often presented as a resounding hymn of progress, freedom and equality. But not everyone feels represented by that song. Writers such as Safae el Khannoussi and Houria Bouteldja show what happens when we tilt our gaze – when we listen to voices that are rarely invited to sing along. Voices from marginalised communities, from people who feel estranged in the so-called free West. In their work, we hear a counter-chorus, one that exposes the blind spots of the European project.

Polyphony also extends to form. In literature, satire and parody are potent tools for chipping away at power. Because if you can laugh at power, it already starts to lose its grip. Open critique tends to provoke resistance – but as the court jester of democracy, the writer is free to topple sacred cows and unmask hypocrisy with impunity. Authors like Herman Koch and Natasha Brown hold up a mirror to their readers by turning their sharp gaze on the literary world itself. In their novels, too, we see not only whose voices we’re used to hearing – but more strikingly, what remains unsaid.

Lastly, come listen to a live podcast episode from the series Lange lijnen by the collective Fixdit. Fixdit strives for greater diversity in the canon and the literary world. Through campaigns, essays, open letters, and discussions, Fixdit aims to raise awareness of gender inequality in literature and expand the canon with work by important female authors.

In Chorus of Many, you’ll also hear the vital “annoying” voices – the ones that disturb our peace and force us to pay attention to what we’d rather ignore. Like the screech of a pigeon disrupting our urban calm… except the pigeon isn’t just a pigeon. It’s a symbol of everything we’ve pushed to the edges. Sounds cryptic? All the more reason to come and listen.

Talks & Performances

Safae el Khannoussi & Houria Bouteldja - Wrestling with the monstrous but ancient beast known as 'Europe'

Who are structurally unheard, ignored, or actively oppressed in the states of Europe in the 21st century? What happens when you abandon the postcolonial gaze on Europe itself, where colonial power structures still persist? And what happens when these excluded groups organize themselves anyway, when borders, religions, and color fade and merge into one another?

In this program, writer and philosopher Safae el Khannoussi (Morocco, 1994) and political thinker and activist Houria Bouteldja (Algeria, 1973) discuss the “losers” of European modernity: people from former colonies, white workers, exiles, and refugees. They discuss how these groups are being played off against each other by (supra)nationalist tendencies. But also, and above all, they discuss the radical solidarity and emancipation that becomes possible when these groups find and embrace each other.

Houria Bouteldja is co-founder of the Parti des Indigènes de la République, a decolonial political movement in France. In her work, which draws inspiration from Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, and James Baldwin, among others, she analyzes how colonial ideology and racial hierarchy remain deeply entrenched in European societies. In Whites, Jews, and Us (2017, translated to English by Rachel Valinsky), she examines racial relations in France and calls for a rethinking of left-wing political alliances. In her most recent book, Eigen volk en immigranten (2024, translated to Dutch by Ellis Booi, Editie Leesmagazijn), she shows that the birth of the nation state is steeped in paradoxes about what freedom means, and for whom. In the book, she focuses on what she identifies as the major “losers” of this pact: people from former colonies and white workers. Since they are oppressed by the same elite, can they find common ground in a joint struggle for justice?

Safae el Khannoussi is a writer, lecturer, and PhD candidate in political philosophy. In her work, she explores themes such as exile, flight, identity, and displacement. Her debut novel Oroppa (2024) is an exuberant, hallucinatory tale about the side of Europe that remains invisible to most. The colorful group of shadow figures that appear in the novel each struggle with their own trauma. They have all been spit out by a monstrous Europe, each in their own way, but despite their loneliness, they seem to find solace in each other in snack bars, pubs, attics, and basements. The book was immediately acclaimed by critics, awarded the biggest literary prizes in Belgium and the Netherlands, and is now considered a milestone in Dutch literature. El Khannoussi was inspired by Bouteldja's work, including the quote: “I am a loser. That and that alone is my starting point.” The fictional writer of the last part of Oroppa, “the fear notebooks,” as a “poet and dissident,” gloriously puts Bouteldja's principle into practice.

Bouteldja and El Khannoussi are two ideal guests for a conversation about what literature can mean for themes such as identity, exclusion, and forging new alliances. Both writers know how to connect all kinds of apparent contradictions in their work, switching effortlessly between literature and politics, between Europe and the much larger rest of the world, between oppression and emancipation—and will hopefully do so in this conversation as well.

Natasha Brown & Herman Koch - Satire as a mirror

What can satire reveal that remains unspoken in serious conversation? How can we use humor to confront without preaching? We are incredibly excited about the combination of these two literary heroes on one stage: British author Natasha Brown (UK, 1990) and Herman Koch (1953). Based on their new novels, they will discuss satire as a stylistic device and as a way of undermining established ideas. Their novels are both set at the intersection of fiction and social criticism, and are populated by characters who seem eerily familiar to us, and probably to you as a literature lover as well. In Universal and The Air Room, the media and literary satires recently published by Brown and Koch, readers must be constantly on their guard.

First up is Universality. In her second novel, Natasha Brown, who made her debut in 2021 with Assembly, shoots at the media world. In the novel, we follow a number of journalists who all participate in their own way in the opportunistic game of influence and power. The novel ends at a literary festival, where a book talk degenerates into a public power game. A scene that is painfully recognizable to anyone who has ever attended a literary evening—yes, we are aware of the Droste effect, and no, we have never experienced anything this meta at ILFU before. 

With Luchtplaats (2024), bestselling author Herman Koch wrote a satire on both the crime novel and the literary circuit. In his characteristic dryly comical style, he exposes the mutual competition between writers, publishers, and other players in the cultural field. Koch knows better than anyone how to stretch discomfort until it becomes first hilarious and then poignant. You want to look away, but you also want to know how it ends.

Something else you should know: Natasha Brown is a Herman Koch reader and admires his writing. And then there is an almost uncomfortable similarity between their latest books: both play with the dynamics of interviews at literary festivals, where polite questions sometimes conceal very different interests. We are curious to see whether we will also feel that discomfort when this unusual duo engages in conversation with each other.

Fixdit - live recording with Rachida Lambaret

During a live recording of the Fixdit podcast series Lange lijnen (Long Lines), Rachida Lamrabet talks to young literary scholars Jannah Loontjes and Iris Kater Mirsalari about her novel Vertel het iemand. The book follows a young Amazigh who is sent to the front in France during the First World War. Lamrabet shows how necessary it is to tell history from multiple perspectives. Some stories do not disappear by chance, she argues, and this has consequences for how future generations view themselves and others. She also talks about writers who have influenced her, Fatima Mernissi and Leila Abouzeid.

She-Pigeon (performance)

On the edge of the roof, on the edge of society: in the poignant monologue She-Pigeon, performer and writer Selin Davasse gives voice to a bird that is everywhere but rarely noticed. The pigeon—once domesticated, now relegated to urban vermin—becomes in her text a metaphor for the many people who were once welcome but have slowly been pushed to the fringes. She-Pigeon moves between poetry and politics and explores how societies deal with the ‘guests’ who have stayed: the descendants of guest workers, migrants, minorities. Davasse asks a painful but necessary question: A pigeon could love you no matter how dirty. Do you think you could love her back?