Berlin International Literature Festival

Since 2002, internationally renowned guest authors of the ilb have voluntarily visited Berlin prisons during the festival to read from their books and discuss them with inmates.

In November 2015, the Berlin International Literature Festival published an appeal to support Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian-Saudi Arabian poet imprisoned and lashed for apostasy, with a Worldwide Reading on 14 January 2016.

The opening speakers for each year have been: Das außergewöhnliche Buch (translation: The Extraordinary Book) is an international children's and youth literature prize.

From 2012 to 2020, 240 books have been awarded, including The Invisible Cities, The Adventures of Pinocchio, The Diary of a Young Girl, the Struwwelpeter, Odyssey, The Little Prince, The Treasure Island, and Around the World in Eighty Days.

Since 2001, more than 2,500 authors from more than 120 countries have presented their work at the festival, among them Nobel Prize Winners Svetlana Alexievich, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass, Doris Lessing, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gao Xingjian as well as Charles Simic, Han Kang, Juli Zeh, Rebecca Solnit, Monica Ali, Samantha Schweblin, Carla Guelfenbein, Yasmina Reza, Mona Eltahawy, Hanan al-Shaykh, Marie NDiaye, Ozge Samanci, Dacia Maraini, Ljudmila Ulitzkaya, Bernice Chauly, Laksmi Pamuntiak, and Antonio Tabucchi.