On 5th July 2007, the German Bundestag passed the Second Act Governing Copyright in the Information Society ("Second Basket" of copyright law reform). Four years after the first reform, a new balance has been struck between the interests of authors, exploiters, equipment producers and end-users, none of whom are, however, especially happy with the compromise solution....
more
Rüdiger Safranski has pulled off the improbable: his book on Romanticism is a genuinely exciting account of German intellectual history. By Ulrich Greiner
read more
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.
read more
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.
read more
Like a hunter-gatherer, Volker Michels has been foraging for traces of the life and work of author Hermann Hesse for thirty years now. For his private Hesse archive in Offenbach, he collects and cross-references all of Hesse's letters, pictures and manuscripts he can find. Roman Bucheli portrays an archivist on the brink of obsession. (Image © Gret Widmann)
read more
Ingo Schulze has reached new literary heights in his latest collection of short stories. Full of digressions and distractions, full of calculated humility, Schulze turns what seems to be non-art into art in its highest form. By Ulrich Greiner
read more
Germany as a culture does not correspond to the German nation. Which means that the much-quoted truth that the Germans were united by their literature or their language has always also been a lie. For German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani the most German of German writers is none other than Franz Kafka.
read more
Ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has just written his memoirs "Decisions", in which he relates at length what a smashing job he made of everything. And along the way he reveals a singular lack of literary talent. Writer Georg M. Oswald journeys into a rosy past.
read more
With this story, journalist Kathrin Passig won one of the most prestigious literary awards in German letters, the Ingeborg Bachman Prize. (Photo © Johannes Jander)
read more
The well-loved German poet and artist Robert Gernhardt died on June 30, 2006. We publish a selection of his poems in English with the kind permission of his translator Ursula Runde, and several drawings from Gernhardt's "German Readers" series.
read more
German star comic artist Ralf König on burqas in Germany, the Pope in Cologne and his gay Islamist satire "Jinn Jinn". An interview with Wieland Freund.
read more
The Ingeborg Bachmann Competition has just ended in Klagenfurt. One of the participants was writer Clemens Meyer, whose debut novel "Als wir träumten" was highly acclaimed at the Leipzig Book Fair in March. He spoke with Gerrit Bartels just before the competition about Klagenfurt, his writing and tattoos.
read more
2006 is the 150th anniversary of the death of German poet Heinrich Heine and the debate surrounding this year's literary Heinrich-Heine Prize is currently filling out the feuilletons. Here we publish writer Georg Klein's compilation of his top ten favourite Heine quotes on that most controversial of subjects: religion.
read more
The prestigious Georg Büchner Prize for literature is to be awarded to poet Oscar Pastior. Martin Lüdke welcomes the long overdue decision to honour the work of a mild mannered word wizard.
read more
Like hero, like author. Ilija Trojanow, world traveller, author of travel books and Mecca pilgrim, has written an astounding biographical novel about Richard Francis Burton, Mecca pilgrim, author of travel books and world traveller. By Karl-Markus Gauß
read more
Poet Helga M. Novak talks to Uta Beiküfner about the fascination of socialism, travelling to where the action is and the unexpected blessings of the madhouse. (Photo © Renate von Mangoldt)
read more
RSS