Exploring Stories 25: Never Again is Now

Never Again is Now

In 2025, it is impossible to organise a literary festival without acknowledging one of the greatest humanitarian and moral crises of our time. As the world watches, a horrifying tragedy unfolds in Gaza. Writers, readers, thinkers – in other words, all of us – cannot and will not look away.

Under the banner Never Again is Now, the Exploring Stories programme delves into how Dutch and international writers and thinkers grapple with the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Themes such as memory, responsibility, and resistance are central to this series. What does it mean to say “never again” while witnessing history repeat itself in real time? How do we write about trauma when the trauma hasn’t ended? What does it mean to commemorate if we shut our eyes to the present? Whose voices are we hearing – and whose are being systematically ignored or demonised? Why do so many people avert their gaze from violence that happens “elsewhere”?

Through essays, novels, pamphlets and personal testimonies, writers Gaël Faye, Isabella Hammad, Maurits de Bruijn, Omar El Akkad and Sinan Çankaya explore what literature can – and crucially, cannot – do in times of humanitarian crisis. They remind us that literature is not innocent. They search for language to name the unbearable, pose questions where politics remains silent, and confront us with uncomfortable truths about identity, history, and complicity.

With Never Again is Now, we create space for urgent conversations about what we remember, what we choose not to see, and what meaning, if any, “never again” still has in a time when history’s darkest patterns are once again unfolding.

Talks & performances

Isabella Hammad & Maurits de Bruijn - the genocide in Palestine

They both wrote moving pamphlets about Palestine, and we are incredibly honored that they will be talking to each other for the first time during Exploring Stories: the English-Palestinian Isabella Hammad (1992) and ‘our’ Maurits de Bruijn (1984). 

Isabella Hammad made her international breakthrough with her second novel, Enter Ghost (2023), which she won several literary awards for. In this novel, Palestinian history, politics, art and identity are effortlessly interwoven with a human drama loosely based on Hamlet. In 2024 Hammad published the essay Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative, which consists in part of the lecture she gave nine days before October 7, 2023. She supplemented it in the first weeks of 2024 with an afterword, turning this essay into a razor-sharp reflection on the war against the Palestinians. It is as if you are reading a direct account of a turning point in human history. Maurits De Bruijn is a writer and journalist who has written several novels, including Man maakt stuk and has become a prominent voice in the public debate on Israel and Palestine in recent years. In his latest book Geweten (2025, Das Mag), he examines the genocide in Gaza in light of the Holocaust and his own family history (De Bruijn's Jewish grandparents were murdered in Sobibor). Unlike many voices in the debate, he did not write his pamphlet solely from behind a screen: in 2024, he traveled to Israel and Palestine to see firsthand what he had been seeing for months via livestreams and news reports. Geweten became a bestseller, was discussed everywhere, and was even symbolically presented to the mayor of Haarlem, Jos Wienen, who refused to use the word “genocide.”

De Bruijn is familiar with Hammad's work, even quoting her essay in Geweten, and now the two are finally going to have a live conversation. We look forward to a sincere, robust discussion about the role of literature in a war like this, with two writers who differ in background but find common ground in their moral convictions, literary acumen, and the belief that writing about Palestine is necessary.

Sinan Çankaya & Omar El Akkad (online) - cultural commemoration and Western hypocrisy

What is it like to grow up in a country that preaches freedom and equality, but then systematically treats you and your existence as an exception? And what does it do to your trust in a society when it collectively looks away while a horrific history repeats itself? What if you slowly realize that the heroic “never again” does not apply to people who look like you?

In this program, writer and cultural anthropologist Sinan Çankaya (Nijmegen, 1982) and author and journalist Omar El Akkad (Egypt, 1982) discuss memory culture, hypocrisy, and what it feels like to live (and mourn) as a non-white man in a white society. About the disillusionment of integration and the empty promises made by Western societies.

This year, Sinan Çankaya published the poignant essay Galmende geschiedenissen (2025), in which he questions Dutch remembrance culture surrounding the Second World War. Why is the Dutch approach to remembrance so selective, so moralistic, and above all so indifferent when it comes to victims other than “our own”? Why is it so difficult to even mention the genocide of the Palestinians in this country, let alone commemorate it? The war in Gaza shifted his worldview to such an extent that he felt compelled to write this book, according to Çankaya in a much-discussed interview with NRC, in which he declared the entire concept of integration dead. “Integration is a task that has been placed solely on the shoulders of migrants. [...] The superior Dutch are supposedly civilized, while the rest still have to prove that they belong.”

Canadian-Egyptian writer Omar El Akkad also examines this hypocrisy, self-image, and double standards of the West in his recently published book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025). El Akkad based his debut on his life as an immigrant, war reporter, and father, and explores, among other things, what it means to speak out about Gaza “from the middle of empire.” He paints a picture of moral numbness, of indignation from a safe distance, and shows us how the language of universal human rights seems to be becoming less and less universal. El Akkad will join this conversation via a livestream.

Both writers are familiar with the insider-outsider perspective: they grew up in the West, speak the language, know the customs, and yet repeatedly encounter the dichotomy of who belongs and who does not. And both write incisively about the hypocrisy surrounding Gaza, the “pecking order of suffering” that war presents us with. Their work is a necessary mirror on racism and colonialism, and we hope this conversation will be too. Because can you really be ‘at home’ somewhere if ‘home’ keeps turning away from you and refuses to talk about the pain that is dying on your lips?

Gaël Faye - solo interview about Jacaranda

Note on Language: this talk will be in Dutch

Never Again is Now is not only about what is happening in Gaza. That is why we are grateful to welcome French-Rwandan singer, rapper, and writer Gaël Faye (1982) to Exploring Stories. In his new novel Jacaranda, which will be published by Meulenhoff in September, we follow Milan, who grows up in France but gradually discovers the history and family stories of his homeland Rwanda, a country struggling with the aftermath of the genocide against the Tutsis. Through Milan's family, which has been scarred by the genocide, the story of a country trying to heal unfolds. Gaël Faye, who made his breakthrough with his debut Klein land, interweaves personal stories with political and moral questions in Jacaranda: how much do you tell your children? How do you continue to live with people who were once diametrically opposed to you, or who betrayed your family, for example? And how do you relate to parents or grandparents who have done terrible things themselves? Jacaranda is about Rwanda after 1994. A country where people are trying to start over and seek something resembling justice in civil tribunals, while the ground still reverberates with violence. During Exploring Stories, Faye talks about writing this novel and how literature can help us look at what is actually unbearable.

Faye will be interviewed by Roderik Six. An interpreter will be present on stage during this conversation.

Palestine Reading Vigil

In solidarity with the Palestinian people, visitors and writers from Exploring Stories will read from books that deal with loss, resistance, and humanity. During this literary vigil, we will commemorate the victims of the genocide in Palestine. Everyone is welcome to read an excerpt of up to five minutes. Several festival authors will also participate in this public form of commemoration.

We are organizing this vigil together with the action group Reading Vigil for Palestine. Reading Vigil for Palestine is a daily action on Dam Square in Amsterdam to read aloud about Palestinian history and struggle until a permanent ceasefire is achieved. Since November 2023, the action has been claiming public space for political education while simultaneously building an audio archive of the readings and a collective library. The readings express solidarity with the Palestinian cause in the resistance against genocide, colonialism, and occupation. Join the vigil on the square every day from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

Amnesty’s human rights pub quiz

Challenge your friends and fellow festivalgoers in the spiciest pub quiz in the Netherlands: Amnesty’s Pub Quiz! Take on the challenge with questions about human rights and surprising fun facts.