Twenty-five years after his cult TV series, Kir Royal, director Helmut Dietl has now come released a sort of ?sequel? for the big screen. Zettl focuses on the high-flying career of a ruthless media man in Berlin. As satire, however, the frigid figures in Zettl fail to warm up to viewers. ...
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A land of hidden longings: Ulla Lenze is the first German writer to be invited into the inner sanctum of Sheikha Shamma's literary salon, in the United Arab Emirates' desert palace of Al Ain. Lenze takes us along for the ride.
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Iraqi-German writer Najem Wali feels that the Arab Writers Union has a problem or two. It's overtly anti-Semitic, anti-democratic and opposed to freedom of speech. The Union doesn't realise that literature is not the product of conferences and pamphlets, but rather of freedom.
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Islamicist movements are becoming increasingly influential in the Arab world. Yet with few exceptions, phenomena like fundamentalism and religiously motivated terror have hardly been dealt with in Arabic literature. By Mona Naggar
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