Is this us?

ended

Is this us? Is depression what defines us? Is poverty the essence of us? Is sickness the only characteristics to identify with? Is loneliness all there is for us? Is politics us? What defines us? ITU is a selection of socially committed literary works, which give readers much needed comfort in a world, which has – also because of the pandemics and social and political environment in Slovenia – become even more anxious, scared, isolated and divided then before. For the ITU project we selected works addressing important social or personal themes of modern times, such as anxiety disorder, isolation, overachievement consequences, need for a community, reflexion on the resistance during the second world war, building new life after terrible loss, migration, integration, poverty, refugees, life of socially marginalised groups, complicated human relations, mystery … As our main audience in general are children and young adults, we chose seven young adult titles and one adult title, which won the EUPL prize. Our means of expression are books. We are responsible of what kind of books we publish. And this selection is our response to the course our society is going. Slovenia is facing very hard times, people are more divided than ever and we do want our readers to read stories of progress, hope, positive turns. We need stories based on actual events (two from our selection are) and stories young people can identify with, so we can see, that a brighter future might be – is! –ahead of us. We selected these titles as we firmly believe, that they will raise awareness among our audience. By selecting majority of minor languages (Estonian, Croatian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian) we assure diversity and invite readers to the literary worlds of smaller countries. This is our contribution to strengthening transnational circulation of works, emphasizing the importance of introducing young readers to new lifestyles and supporting cultural and linguistic diversity and heritage.