The renowned Berlin International Literature Festival is inviting people around the world to take part in a reading on 25 October 2013 to mark the tenth anniversary of the detention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Along with artists and intellectuals, schools, universities, radio and TV stations, cultural institutions and human rights organisations are invited to organize readings to remember Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and all the other political prisoners in Russia and to express their solidarity.

More than 50 authors, philosophers and actors have responded to the Festival’s appeal offering their support, including the Nobel Laureates in Literature Herta Müller, Elfriede Jelinek and Mario Vargas Llosa. The Berlin International Literature Festival will be providing reading material in various languages on its website from 30 July 2013, choosing  Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s final speech in his second trial, extracts of Khodorkovsky’s correspondence with Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Boris Akunin, and articles by him about his prison life.

People who would like to organize an event are asked to get in contact with the Berlin International Literature Festival by the 30 August using the email address: worldwidereading@literaturfestival.com.  All the planned readings will then be published on the Worldwide Readings website. Since 2006, the Berlin International Literature Festival has regularly invited worldwide readings for political prisoners and dissidents, including Chinese author and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, Pussy Riot and Li Bifeng.