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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The German Literature Days opened in Klagenfurt on Wednesday the 29th with the usual "Speech on Literature". As part of the festival, the prestigious Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for literature is awarded. This year's speaker, Swiss author and literary critic Iso Camartin warned the jury and the audience to exercise critical rigour in their decision. "Of course we can let anyone write what they want, but let us ensure that we don't waste our time with junk thoughts and word waste." It will be interesting to see whether his words are heeded. (Read the speech in full on the Bachmann Prize website which is full of other useful links.)
The 22,500 euro prize money is donated by the city of Klagenfurt in memory of its famous daughter Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973). (Read a biography in English here. Further information in German here and here)
The three-day literary marathon began yesterday, with renowned authors reading from their own unpublished works. This year's participating authors include Barbara Bongartz, Julia Schoch and Anne Weber. (Here a complete list and video portraits of the authors. Here a selection of excerpts. The magazine Volltext also offers many of the texts in full.) This year's jury includes Burkhard Spinnen, Ilma Rakusa, Norbert Miller, Heinrich Detering and jury president Iris Radisch.
What distinguishes this competition from others of similar rank is its transparency. The jury discusses the work with the authors immediately after the reading and the public can watch the entire proceedings live on ORF and 3sat, and follow them on the Internet. "What does this exceptional interplay between literature and the media mean for the participants?" asks Doris Moser in an English study "Reality-TV, cultural mission, literary marketing. The Ingeborg Bachmann Prize on television". (Download )
Previous winners include Ulrich Plenzdorf (1978), Sten Nadolny (1980), Wolfgang Hilbig (1989) and last year the prize went to Uwe Tellkamp. Here a list of all 28 winners and information on German and international literature prizes.)
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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.