Novelist and poet Dimitri Verhulst is a master of portraying the erosion of humanity without sentiment and with uncompromising frankness and humour. He is not interested in man as an aspirant for success but as an ultimate failure. For him, every failure is simply a failure; it is no muddy path ending in a shining spotlight. Verhulst himself does not mistake the aura of an outsider – something often attributed to him – for a halo. He undermines the general belief that literature holds up a mirror to society by questioning who it is that actually looks in the mirror. Can literature strengthen compassion? And if it is true that our consumer society is becoming more and more infantilised, is literature a suitable preventative? Dimitri Verhulst will discuss this and more with Josefína Formanová. Translator Veronika ter Harmsel Havlíková will read excerpts from Verhulst’s latest book.