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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Senator James Inhofe, a leading light of the American right (pardon the oxymoron) has declared that global warming is "the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on Americans." This is a troubling statement from a lawmaker. But for me what is more disturbing is the cynical attitude of those global warming activists who salve their consciences by purchasing carbon credits while they continue destroying the earth with their lavish lifestyles. Flat-earthers have been with humanity since the beginning of time, and each age will have its own Inhofes or George W. Bushes. But the progressive people who are aware that the world has a fever – to borrow Al Gore’s favourite phrase – yet engage in unbridled consumption habits that contribute to excessive carbon dioxide and methane emissions are more dangerous. The danger lies in the fact that in all their good intentions they are not alleviating global warming. Instead they are causing more problems for the peoples of the developing countries whose political and business leaders see carbon credits as the new gold.
I see carbon credits as fools' gold or pyrite. For one thing they perpetuate the dependency mentality that has to-date destroyed Africa. Once more the industrialized West is seen as the saviour. Development projects that should have been undertaken in any case can now be accomplished in exchange of carbon credits. Theoretically everyone wins: Africa can milk this new source of financing development and the West can continue polluting the world with clear consciences.
My country, South Africa, also hopes to enjoy the short-term benefits of global warming. Already carbon credits trading consultants are descending like vultures, angling for environmental friendliness in existing projects in order to create carbon credits to sell to the Europeans. In the meantime, communities in the marginalized urban slums and rural areas have to bear the brunt. In Durban a community has to contend with a landfill of toxic waste coming from the wealthy areas. This dump has made residents sick for years, but now it must be kept open to produce methane that will be turned into "clean" electricity, thus qualifying for carbon credits. Elsewhere in Africa afforestation and reforestation using fast-growing alien trees encroaches on agricultural lands and threatens to impact seriously on food security.
Southern Africa is the most vulnerable region for global warming, and already we see prolonged droughts that affect food production. South Africa ranks among the top 15 world biggest polluters due to the heavy dependence on coal and the fact that mining is energy intensive. The country therefore has the potential of being the largest producer of carbon credits by finding ways to reduce emissions. But when carbon credits are used for poverty alleviation it leaves room for corrupt leaders to shirk their responsibility of developing their countries and instead indulge in grandiose schemes aimed solely at the carbon credit dollars and euros.
Introducing incentives of the free market into pollution control is not a bad idea for the wealthy classes of both the West and the developing world. But very few of the benefits trickle down to the poor. Instead it gives the wealthy classes carte blanche to waste as much energy and their plants to spew as much poison into the atmosphere as they like. It is for this reason that I see the wonderful trade in carbon credits as another way of accelerating the killing of the world.
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The article, written in English, originally appeared in German in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on May 24, 2007.
Zakes Mda (website) is South African writer of novels, plays and poetry. He has won numerous awards including the 2005 Notable Books Award of the American Library Association.
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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.