World Book Day & Sant Jordi 2022: another way to help Ukraine
Why World Book Day this year?
When we started facing the decisions concerning the celebration of World Book Day and Sant Jordi 2022, the invasion of Ukraine was about to take place. We celebrated World Book Day and Sant Jordi (a short video explaining the legend of Sant Jordi is available here) every year since 2017, even during the first COVID19 lockdown that kept the EUI community apart in 2020. At the Library we wondered whether this kind of campaign, usually an excuse to escape the seriousness of academia for a day, would still make sense in these circumstances.
We finally decided to turn this into an opportunity to help. Among the various initiatives we are proposing this year, we will also take the chance to gather funds for the EUI Refugee Initiative.
World Book Day 2022 falls on Saturday 23 April, we’ll therefore celebrate over the three preceding days, 20, 21 and 22 April.
Initiatives: get involved!
- Book Club event
- Book Recommendations
- Library agreements with the British Institute and the Institut Français
- Recording an audiobook for Ukraine: Homage to Catalonia
Recording an audiobook for Ukraine: Homage to Catalonia
We recorded our very own audiobook: the first chapters of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. Many volunteers from the EUI community read a paragraph and we are able to release the first five chapters. We did it to collect money for the EUI Refugee Initiative in support of the Ukrainian crisis.
Download Chapters 1-5 from this link and donate any amount of money by using PayPal with this link or directly with the email refugees.committ[email protected] Please choose the option “sending to a friend”. Thank you!
It wasn’t easy to choose an engaging text in public domain which could be related to the situation in Ukraine. We chose Homage to Catalonia for its prose and style, but most of all for its vivid description of a war that tore Europe apart. Orwell describes the Spanish Civil War, which broke out with a military coup in July 1936 after months of tension following a narrow victory by the leftist Popular Front in the February 1936 Spanish general election. Rebelling forces coalesced as the Nationalists under the leadership of General Francisco Franco and attempted to take over cities that remained under government control. The Republican side was made up of several factions including socialists, anarchists, and communists. Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell’s personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the militia of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista in the Republican army.
Book Club event
In the past few months, we have supported the activities of the new EUI Book Club by purchasing the books proposed. Their aim is to meet once a month to discuss a book, each time from a different EU country. On 20 April they will discuss Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg, and their event will be broadcast on Zoom: join them to see what the book club is all about!
Book recommendations
A classic of the EUI World Book Day is video book recommendations! Follow us on our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) on 20, 21 and 22 April to know what EUI members recommended this year. If you’d like to see more recommendations, watch the videos and read the blogposts we made and wrote in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Library agreements with the British Institute and the Institut Français
The Library and Real Estate and Facilities are delighted to announce two new agreements, finalised especially in occasion of World Book Day, which will allow EUI members to borrow books in English and in French at a discounted rate. Find more information here.