Construction of the Elbe Philharmonic is underway, with its opening planned for autumn, 2011. Hamburg?s creative artists are not alone in seeing a new landmark for their city in this spectacular concert hall....
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American author Jonathan Franzen discusses his German literary influences, American playfulness and his "moral mission". An
interview with Bernadette Conrad
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"I don't stop being Turkish when I'm in the USA, and I'm also an American when I'm in Istanbul." Turkish novelist and professor of gender studies in Tucson, Arizona Elif Shafak talks to Arno Widmann about multiple identities, the joys of heterodoxy and the dangers of getting comfortable.
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The reading race is on to see who will take home this year's Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Awarded as part of the German Literature Days in Klagenfurt, this is Austria's most prestigious literary award, which lauches careers and lines the winner's pocket with a substantial 22,500 euros. We provide some background on the prize and a host of useful links.
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Turkish author Orhan Pamuk is to win what is possibly the most coveted German literary prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The 25,000 euro prize is awarded by the German Book Trade Association every fall to coincide with the Frankfurt Book Fair.
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The youngest generation of Polish writers has avidly taken up the political reality of unemployment, the suburban wasteland and consumption terror in a new spirit of anti-capitalism. But the scene's real superstar, Dorota Maslowska (born 1982), is convincing above all aesthetically. In her works, social misery becomes a virtuoso language game. Her second book, a rap poem, has just been presented at the Warsaw Book Fair. By Ina Hartwig
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Thirty years after his premature death, new CDs document readings
and recitals by the poet Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. They demonstrate even more clearly than the collected texts and letters that Brinkmann's form of production was avantgarde. Listeners now accustomed to pop sounds will feel at home. Wasn't that an interesting noise? Doesn't a lot of this remind you of later low-fi albums and bootlegs? Brinkmann's breathless speaking takes up the "howl" of the beat generation, his lust for the loud is like concrete poetry. By Thomas
Groß
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For 200 years, since the end of the Greater Ottoman Empire, Turkey has been rehearsing the transition from one civilisation to another. And now the anti-European nationalists are gaining favor. The author Orhan Pamuk put his life on the line with "Snow", an overtly political novel about his country's problems. In an interview, Pamuk explains why his book has caused such vehement reactions in Turkey.
Editor's note of October 12, 2006: Orhan Pamuk is winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Experience beats youth hands down this season! Second novels are sprouting up everywhere. Poet Thomas Kling, who died far too young, has left us a final masterpiece. Non-fiction can't escape the dark shadow of World War Two but there's plenty of talk of a life without work as well.
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It won't leave us alone. Sixty years after the end of the war, a new wave of memorial literature is sweeping Germany. We list important studies such as Götz Aly's "Hitler's Volkstaat", as well as novels, biographies and memoires.
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Biographies of Friede Springer, Stefan Aust and Martin Walser and the latest book by philosopher Peter Sloterdijk.
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Work can no longer form the foundation of our self-image. With this simple statement, Wolfgang Engler seems to have struck a nerve among Feuilletonists.
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In his first work of fiction, Rome-born writer Alessandro Piperno
addresses his social milieu. Italian critics are calling his portrayal
of the Jewish bourgeoisie politically incorrect. The book is the talk
of the town. By Franz Haas
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An American and a German go in search of a small-time drug baron in the Brandenburg outback.... A short story by Georg Klein.
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Among the favourites of the season are Terezia Mora, Antje Ravic
Strubel, Juli Zeh, Brigitte Kronauer and Irina Liebmann. Thank goodness
they're not so young that we have to speak of a new girl-wonder
phenomenon.
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From the mysterious identity of a possibly Jewish SS officer to the history of i.d. itself.
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