Cornelia Funke tells stories of fairies and mud monsters, of adventurous girls, a gang of children in Venice ? and her stories somewhere between fantasy and adventure are Germany?s most successful literary export at the moment....
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In "Chinas Rebellen" ("Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing"), Ian Buruma tells of exiled Chinese dissidents
in the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Chinese
mainland. On his travels, Buruma met the legendary Wei Jingshen,
student leaders from the Tien An Men protests in 1989, labour
organisers in the Shenzhen free trade zone, underground Christians in
provincial backwaters ("Jesus was a democrat") and opposition
politicians in Hong Kong and Singapore. Courageous, intelligent if not
brilliant people, they have paid a high price for their courage. Their
problem is that they are often hopelessly at loggerheads and overly
suspicious of one another. Admitting he sometimes wished they would all
go to the devil, Buruma shows a healthy scepticism for the achievements
of the "children of the dragon". Die Zeit and Der Spiegel praise the book, while the FAZ regrets a lack of understanding for China's cultural specificity.
Seymour Hersh's "Die Befehlskette" ("Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib") receives almost reverential reviews in the German Feuilletons. Hersh collects and expands on the pieces he wrote on Abu Ghraib
for the New Yorker, showing in detail how the liberty to mete out
torture was granted by the senior level in Washington. The FR has nothing but admiration for Hersh's exhaustive research and serious use of sources, while Ulrich Greiner in Die Zeit calls "Chain of Command" the best book available on life behind the scenes in the Bush administration. The texts are thoroughly researched, and rechecked in detail by the New Yorker's editors. Greiner is astounded by the extent to which Hersh has access to information and appraisals from within the White House. Hersch shows in harrowing detail how the "carte blanche" for torture in Abu Ghraib came from on high.
Things take a theoretical turn with Francis Fukuyama's "Staaten bauen" ("State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century"). In the Taz, Warnfried Dettling calls the book a "political event of the first order".
For Fukuyama, building strong states is the most important political
challenge of the 21st century. But these states can't be allowed to get
fat. Social expenditures must be cut back, and administrations
streamlined. Educational systems must be made more effective, and
judiciaries more reliable. In Die Zeit, Herfried Münkler links
the boom in interest in the state as institution to widespread fears of
international terror and the prevailing will to overcome chaos and
adversity.
America's number two conservative thinker also draws
much acclaim. In "Who Are We" ("Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National
Identity"), Samuel Huntington inquires into the American identity, concluding that the protestant, Anglo-Saxon
roots of the United States are threatened by America's growing Hispanic
population. The FAZ writes that despite a somewhat bullheaded
approach, Huntington is addressing an important set of questions with
the book. Claus Leggewie in Die Zeit decries the work as an anti-immigration manifesto, but aggrees with the FAZ that the problems Huntington deals with are very real. 
Among the non-American political works to receive positive reviews in the German press is Gilles Kepel's "Die neuen Kreuzzüge" ("The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West"). Across the board, critics commend Kepel's profound knowledge of Islamic culture. While Alexandra Senfft in the SZ finds Kepel's theses on the emergence of Islamic terrorism not entirely new, she nevertheless praises his mastery at compressing considerable detail into a readable account. Among the many causes that led militant Islamism to become an "integral component of the West", Kepel has isolated "American neoconservatives, pro-occupation Israeli politicians, reactionary Arab leaders and international networks of militant Islamists." All of them are linked in a "baneful cooperation", to which the Americans, of all people, seek to turn a blind eye. Rather than accepting the unpleasant fact that responsibility for terror cells like al-Qaida can be traced back to Cold War policies, America continues to wage war against its own creation, and thereby worsens the situation. For the author, the solution lies in the modernisation of Islam, for example by integrating modern Muslims in Western democracies. A good-minded thought, but as Senfft comments, an end to the terror threat does not seem to be in the cards for the foreseeable future.
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The headlines were stolen by Charlotte Roche's moist little sex shocker and Jonathan Littell's sprawling SS fantasies but only two books united the critics: one is good and the other, utterly objectionable. There was a flurry of interest in some fabulous comics and a resurgence of the political and the historical novel. A dip into the books published in Germany this spring.
The nonfiction books this spring look into life as a budding president, a kitchen slave, a prophet, a string quartet. They pick apart the world of the elites, of lust and taste and '68.
Travels through the dreams and nightmares of Europe, in a small land of great poets, torn between Balkan catastrophe and Brussels. A reportage on Croatia, this year's partner country at the Leipzig Book Fair. By Gregor Dotzauer 
An SS man reflects on mass murder - and there's a pigeon hole for every vile deed. Novelist Georg Klein on the Holocaust and the enlightened harmony of trivial realism in Jonathan Littell's novel "Les Bienveillantes" which has just been translated into German.
The 400-page German translation of Jonathan Littell's corpse-littered SS novel,"Les Bienveillantes," has put the German-language feuilletons into a critical frenzy, despite the general consensus that the book is bad. We have compiled a selection of the accusations hurled. 
Kurt von Hammerstein was head of the Reichswehr, a grand seigneur, and an implacable opponent of National Socialism. In his new book "Hammerstein oder Der Eigensinn" (Hammerstein or idiosycrasy), Hans Magnus Enzensberger engages in dialogues with the dead to deliver a literary and lunatic precipitate of German history.
This literary autumn belongs to two Russian writers: Vassily Grossmann and Varlam Shalamov, whose epic works have been published in German at long last. But older Germans and German Romantics, Polish queens, Romanian Mannerists, combative atheists, Neopolitan Camorristi, Catalonian knights and a glutton of glorious abandon have also come up trumps.
The literary event of the season is the inexplicably delayed publication of two Russian masterpieces: Vassily Grossmann's historic drama of the 20th century "Life and Fate" and Varlam Shalamov's collection of tales from Kolyma "Durch den Schnee". On the German side, we have seen older novelists flexing their muscles and reaching for the skies, biographers looking up to bygone giants, and the feuilletons rallying to defend religion against the air strikes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. 
The novel is blooming in the Urals, where the children of the former technology elite are letting their imaginations run riot. By Sonja Margolina
Polish author Andrzej Stasiuk's book "Dojczland" is a sophisticated portrait of German-Polish relations with flights of sarcasm and a fine sense of grotesque. Doused heavily in bourbon, it's a controversial bestseller in Poland. By Thomas Urban
Romanian literature is still a tiny niche in the German book
market. Mircea Cartarescu's latest novel to be published here,
"Die Wissenden," shows readers what they are missing. A visit to
Bucharest to meet the man who is probably Romania's most famous author. By Jörg Plath
Come cruising in the park they say is dead. In his
biography of Stefan George, Thomas Karlauf reveals the charismatic German poet's authoritarian practices and the homoerotic core of his work. By Alexander Cammann
Rüdiger Safranski has pulled off the improbable: his book on Romanticism is a genuinely exciting account of German intellectual history. By Ulrich Greiner
Germany's book market is being flooded this autumn by biographies of dead male writers. Ina Hartwig examines the whys, wherefores and potential pitfalls of this latest literary craze.
The German Book Prize 2007, an annual award for the best German language novel, has been awarded to Julia Franck. Read an English excerpt of her book, "Lady Midday", and of the other five on the shortlist.