Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen.
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The New York Review of Books | Outlook India | L'Express | Revista de Libros | Gazeta Wyborcza | The Guardian | Die Weltwoche | Heti Vilaggazdasag | The New York Times Book Review
The New York Review of Books, 01.12.2005 (USA)
William Dalrymple visited the Madrassa Haqqania in Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, a radical religious school where many of the Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, were trained. Dalrymple meets the school's "unexpectedly cheery and dapper" director Maulana Sami ul-Haq: "I remarked that there didn't seem to be much evidence of the Haqqania suffering from the crackdown on centers of radicalism promised by President Musharraf. Sami's face lit up:'That is for American consumption only,'
he laughed cheerfully. 'It is only statements to the newspapers.
Nothing has happened.' 'So,' I asked, 'you are not finding the
atmosphere difficult at the moment?' 'We are in a good, strong
position,' replied Sami. 'Bush has woken the entire Islamic world. We are grateful to him.'"
Outlook India, 28.11.2005 (India)
The artist Rajeev Sethi sings a hymn to Indira Gandhi. 88 years after she was born, he remembers how he once had a conversation with the former prime minister – about cushions.
"I said: all these cushions... why do you have them?' She said she knew
of no chair she had ever sat on that her back had liked, and talked of
how, from an ergonomical point of view, cushions were the best adjuncts to bad design.
Holding up the cushions supporting her back, she looked up and smiled
again. 'These too, could be metaphorical you know!' I have since cursed
myself for being too tongue-tied to avail of the finest opportunity to
start a meaningful conversation with a woman I had seen becoming larger than life almost before my eyes."
L'Express, 17.11.2005 (France)
The
Islamic "boom" in France is dividing the French Left. L'Express invited
journalist Caroline Fourest and political scientist Francois Burgat to battle it out in a discussion that "couldn't have been more heated".
When asked whether the Left had "prepared the way for Islamism", Burgat
answered: "Yes I believe that a certain faction of the Left has
prepared the way for fundamentalism. It encounters a generation which
is keen to participate in the progress of history and which does so in
its own way and with its own vocabulary, with a sectarian and arrogant
rejection, a veto. One of the people with the say in this
leftist faction is you, Caroline Fourest. You contest that Muslim women
can improve things for themselves by using aspects of their own culture."
Caroline Fourest replies: "Let's talk about this Islamic feminism, that
you find more interesting than my lay feminism. According to Tariq Ramadan's (website) definition, women should take on activities which suit their 'nature'
– on the condition that this does not endanger their role within the
patriarchal family, and naturally, that they wear headscarves so as not
to bring their men into temptation. If that's your view of women's
liberation..."
Revista de Libros, 20.11.2005 (Chile)
"Sterile fathers: Borges and Nabokov." Chilean writer and journalist Rafael Gumucio has written a wonderfully melancholy pamphlet railing against the two domestic gods of the (not only) Latin American literati. "Their works are great, and their influence devastating I sometimes think at night. Both assure themselves that the rules which govern the world are inscrutable and accessible to no soul, that society can neither be changed nor preserved. Their contemporary epigones help themselves to their manias but the essence escapes them.
We have trimmed Borges' shamefacedness into a standardised puritanism
to shield us from ridicule. And we have turned Nabokov's lies into our
truths. So many hits with no certainty, so many games with no fun,
sometimes it makes me quite dizzy, it worries me sick. Because as much
as we might contest it and conspire against it: the earth is still
turning, and after all the literary games and showy scepticism, we are
still hungry and thirsty."
Gazeta Wyborcza, 19.11.2005 (Poland)
A year ago the rigged presidential elections in Kiev sparked the so-called Orange Revolution. The Polish Gazeta Wyborcza looks back:
"Pluralism, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and the creation
of a free press – these are the revolution's greatest achievements. But
people want more and faster", writes Marcin Wojciechowski
summing up the mood in Ukraine. He emphasises, though, that even those disappointed by the pace of change are unified behind
President Yushchenko's stated aim: the way into the EU.
For Viaczeslav Briuchowiecki, one of the leaders of the pro-Viktor Yushchenko party "Our Ukraine", the Orange Revolution was worth it. "Thanks to the events of a year ago, Ukrainians have become a political nation – they've taken their destinies in their own hands!" For Briuchowietzki, the major problem remaining is that the Ukrainians' hopes are all not realisable in this year.
The Guardian, 18.11.2005 (UK)
The Labour government is planning a law against whipping up religious hatred, the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill (text here). The Guardian collects a series of statements by authors who speak out against it as a limitation to the freedom of speech, for example author Salman Rushdie: "The simple truth is that wherever religions, with their narrow moralities, get into society's driving seat, tyranny results. The Inquisition results. Or the Taliban."
Die Weltwoche, 17.11.2005 (Switzerland)
Aided by recent publications, Alain Zucker looks into the current and future roll of Google. The success of the firm, which made 4.2 billion dollars in the first nine months of this year, is based primarily on its personalised advertising through keywords. "For the first time, the effect of advertisement is measurable right down to the last click. That is reflected in the differing prices for various keywords. Someone who enters 'digital cameras' is probably more intent on buying one than someone who enters the singular. That's why you pay thirty cents more for the plural. Another fact is seen in the price for one of the most expensive keywords, 'mesothelioma', which costs upward of thirty dollars per click. That price is due to the high fees charged by lawyers with class-action lawsuits who are looking for cases of this cancer caused by asbestos."
Walter De Gregorio discovers from veteran Italian porn star and producer Rocco Siffredi about the sorts of moral squalidness he has encountered on his short jaunts into the serious film industry, for example with actress Amira Casar, with whom he played in Catherine Breillat's intellectual blue movie "Anatomy of Hell". "Amira said to me, 'You know, I've acted with Gwyneth Paltrow. Hollywood, tu comprends? Hollywood.' - 'Then you can bugger off to Hollywood, you dumb bitch!' She talked to me as if I was an idiot. If it's Vincent Cassel screwing her, it's 'art'. If it's me, it's porno. That kind of shit makes me puke."
Heti Vilaggazdasag, 17.11.2005 (Hungary)
Sociologist Janos Ladanyi writes that Hungary should also take a lesson from the strife in France: "True, Paris is far away, and the situation of immigrants under the influence of Islamic fundamentalism in France is only slightly akin to that of the Hungarian Roma. But the combination of poverty and ethnic marginalisation can spark off dangerous conflicts, here as well as abroad.... When our government, opposition and intellectuals debate about the necessary social measures to be taken, they shouldn't act as if the riots started up by ethnic minorities – a year and a half ago in Slovakia and now in France – were happening on a distant planet."
The New York Times Book Review, 20.11.2005 (USA)
Author Jonathan Lethem writes a hymn to his European colleague Italo Calvino, whose death twenty years ago came as a personal blow. "Calvino, it seemed to me, had managed effortlessly what no author in English could quite claim: his novels and stories and fables were both classically modernist and giddily postmodern, embracing both experiment and tradition, at once conceptual and humane, intimate and mythic. Calvino, with his frequent references to comics and folktales and film, and his droll probing of contemporary scientific and philosophical theories, had encompassed motifs associated with brows both high and low in an internationally lucid style, one wholly his own."
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The Republicans are waging a war against women, the New York Magazine declares. Perhaps it's because women are so unabashed about reading porn in public - that's according to publisher Beatriz de Moura in El Pais Semanal, at least. Polityka remembers Operation Reinhard. Tensions are growing between Poland and Hungary as Victor Orban spreads his influence, prompting ruminations on East European absurdity from both Elet es Irodalom and salon.eu.sk. Wired is keeping its eyes peeled on the only unassuming sounding Utah Data Center.
In Telerama, Benjamin Stora grabs hold of the Algerian boomerang. In Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic tells the Venetians that they should be very scared of Chinese money. Bela Tarr tells the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Berliner Zeitung that his "Turin Horse", which ends in total darkness was not intended to depress. In die Welt, historian Dan Diner cannot agree with Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands": National Socialism was not like Communism - because of Auschwitz.
In Perfil author Martin Kohn explains why Argentina would be less
Argentinian if it won back the Falklands. In Il sole 24 ore, Armando
Massarenti describes the Italians as a pack of illiterates sitting atop a
treasure trove. Polityka introduces the Polish bestseller of the season:
Danuta Walesa's autobiography. L'Express looks into the state of
Japanese literature one year after Fukushima.
In Merkur, Stephan Wackwitz muses on poetry and absurdity in Tiflis. Outlook India happens on the 1980s Indian answer to "The Artist". Bloomberg Businessweek climbs into the cuckoo's nest with the German Samwar brothers. Salon.eu.sk learns how to line the pockets of a Slovenian politician. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Navid Kermani reports back impressed from the Karachi Literature Festival. 
In La Vie des idees, historian Anastassios Anastassiadis explains why we should go easy on Greece. Author Aleksandar Hemon describes in Guernica how ethnic identity is indoctrinated in the classroom in Bosnia and Herzogovina. In Eurozine, Klaus-Michael Bogdal examines how Europe invented the Gypsies. Elet es Irodalon praises the hygiene obsession of German journalists. And Polityka pinpoints Polish schizophrenia.
The New Republic sees a war being waged in the USA against women's rights. For Rue89, people who put naked women on the front page of a newspaper should not be surprised if they go to jail. In Elet es Irodalom, historian Mirta Nunez Daaz-Balart explains why the wounds of the Franco regime never healed. In Eurozine, Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev see little in common between the protests in Russia and those in the Arab world.
In Letras Libras Enrique Krauze and Javier Sicilia fight over anarchy levels. In Elet es Irodalom Balint Kadar wants Budapest to jump on the Berlin bandwagon. In Le Monde Imre Kertesz has given up practically all hope for a democratic Hungary. Polityka ponders poetic inspiration and Wislawa Szymborska's "I don't know". In Espressso, Umberto Eco gets eschatological.
Poland's youth have taken to the streets to protest against Acta and Donald Tusk has listened, Polityka explains. Himal and the Economist report on the repression of homosexuality in the Muslim world. Outlook India doesn't understand why there will be no "Dragon Tattoo" film in India. And in Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic looks at how close the Serbs are to eating grass.
In the French Huffington Post, philosopher Catherine Clement explains why the griot Youssou N'Dour had next to no chance of becoming Senegal's president. Peter Sloterdijk (in Le Monde) and Umberto Eco (in Espresso) share their thoughts about forgetting. Al Ahram examines the post-electoral depression of Egypt's young revolutionaries. And in Eurozine, Kenan Malik defends freedom of opinion against those who want the world to go to sleep.
Il Sole Ore weeps at the death of a laughing Vincenzo Consolo. In Babelia, Javier Goma Lanzon cries: Praise me, please! Osteuropa asks: Hungaria, quo vadis? The newborn French Huffington Post heralds the birth of the individual in the wake of the Arab Spring. Outlook India is infuriated by the cowardliness of Indian politicians in the face of religious fanatics.
In Nepszabadsag the dramatist György Spiro recognises 19th century France in Hungary today. Peter Nadas, though, in Lettre International and salon.eu.sk, is holding out hope for his country's modernisation. In Open Democracy, Boris Akunin and Alexei Navalny wish Russia was as influential as America - or China. And in Lettras Libras, Peter Hamill compares Mexico with a mafia film by the Maquis de Sade.
Are books about to become a sort of author-translator wiki, asks Il Sole 24 Ore. Rue 89 reports on the "Tango Wars" in downtown Buenos Aires. Elet es Irodalom posits a future for political poetry. In Merkur, Mikhail Shishkin encounters Russian pain in Switzerland. Die Welt discovers the terror of the new inside the collapse of the old in Andrea Breth's staging of Isaak Babel's "Maria". And Poetry Foundation waits for refugees in Lampedusa. 
Technology Review sees Apple as the next Big Brother. In Eurozine, Per Wirten still fears the demons of the European project. Al Ahram Weekly features Youssef Rakha's sarcastic "The honourable citizen manifesto". Revista Piaui profiles Iraqi-Norwegian geologist Farouk Al-Kasim. Slate.fr comments on the free e-book versions of Celine's work. And Die Welt celebrates the return of Palais Schaumburg.
Andre Glucksman in Tagesspiegel looks at the impact of the Putinist plague on Russia and Europe. In Letras Libras Martin Caparros celebrates the Kindle as book. György Dalos has little hope that Hungary's intellectuals can help get their country out of the doldrums. Le Monde finds Cioran with his head up the skirt of a young German woman. The NYT celebrates the spread of N'Ko, the West African text messaging alphabet.
MicroMega cheers recent landmark Mafia convictions in Milan. Volltext champions Hermann Broch. Elet es Irodalom calls the Orban government’s attack on cultural heritage "Talibanisation". Magyar Narancs is ambiguous about new negotiations with the IMF. Telerama recommends the icon of anti-colonialism Frantz Fanon. Salon.eu.sk quips about the dubious election results in Russia, and voices in the German press mark the passing of Christa Wolf. And in the Anglophone press Wired profiles Jeff Bezos, while the Columbia Journalism Review polemicises the future of internet journalism.