Die Welt 19.09.2009

Henryk M. Broder fears that Leon de Winter's latest book "The Right of Return", which is a best-seller in the Netherlands and has just been published in Germany, will be dismissed as a morbid vision of Israel's future. "Since years now, debate has shifted from whether Israel should withdraw to the 1967 borders, to whether it was a mistake to settle Israel in Palestine at all, and whether this mistake can be reversed. Parallel to this debate is a creeping public delegitimisation of Israel that is growing in intensity - not through Hamas, Hezbollah or the Iranian president, but through clever, sensitive and critical European intellectuals, whose comments can be read as seismographic signals of public opinion. Only recently, the Swedish writer Henning Mankell denied Israel's right to exist."

Frankfurter Rundschau 22.09.2009

Director Laurent Chetouane complains to Tobi Müller that the theatre has turned its back on politics. "Politicians never stop talking. Like so many dramaturges who are only political in the programme blurb, where you can be sure that, all along, they were on the right side of history. But in the canteen the only questions people ask are, 'where will I do my next production, or who will I be working with?' The theatre is all about admin, just like government. It's balance sheets, not politics."


Berliner Zeitung 23.09.2009

Bernhard Bartsch conducts an instructive interview with the Chinese author Yan Lianke who, despite being a prospective Nobel Prize laureate, is not being allowed to travel to the Frankfurt Book Fair. He explains how censorship works in China. "With my book 'Serve the People!' the publishers said, for example, that the contents would be alright but not the title. And the next lot said that the title would be alright, but not the contents. In the end, nothing was possible: the propaganda office and the press and publication authorities sent out a directive saying that my book maligned the highest aims of Communist Party and that it should not be printed, publicized or discussed in any way. So the book became a taboo."


Spiegel Online 23.09.2009

Germany's election campaign is ruled by fear, writes Elke Schmitter. Fear of instilling fear in the citizenry and transforming unease into political engagement. "The unease is fed by a fear which is all the more threatening - and destructive - for not allowing it expression: the fear that non-stop repair work, a stubborn carry-on regardless attitude is not the answer to our problems. If Opel is saved, or not, it's not just about Opel, but about all the countless medium-sized businesses who provide brakes, cables and hubcaps, yes that's true. But the unsettling question remains: are cars the future? When, if not now, should we have a proper discussion that turns diffuse fears into political questions - about growth and ecology, about the definition of labour, about participation in society?"

Die Tageszeitung 25.09.2009

The writer and musician Liao Yiwu whose public recital of his poem "Massacre" in 1989 earned him a four year prison sentence, is also being prevented from travelling to Frankfurt for the Book Fair. In an interview he explains that all his book are banned in China - including "The Corpse Walker", which was published in English last year and has just been translated into German. "That was in 2001. The Southern Weekend newspaper had just published an interview with me about my work, as 'A Dialogue about Interviews with Chinese from the Underclass.' It attracted public attention and the newspaper got into a lot of trouble. The editor-in-chief was fired and the heads of department were exchanged. Since then it's impossible to even mention my name in the media. But this has not stopped me from interviewing Chinese people from the poorest classes. By now I have talked to 300 people and written down their stories. Some of them have been published in the USA, and more interviews have been published in the German edition 'Fräulein Hallo und der Bauernkaiser'."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 25.09.2009

The literary scene in Egypt is blossoming, as Susanne Schanda discovered while talking to a number of writers there. Bloggers are at least partly to thank, for their speedy dissemination of book tips. "But the new reading boom is attributable solely to the active blogger scene in the Arab world. [The author und publisher Mekkawi] Said points to the influence of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in recent years. 'On the one hand Egyptian workers returning from the Gulf have brought the conservative wahhabiist interpretation of Islam with them, which does not suit our tolerant society. On the other hand the economic boom in the Gulf states has provided the children and teenagers with a good education that they are putting to use by reading books here,' says the 54-year old, adding that better access to information and learning has made the younger generation more open than his own, which suffered under Nasser's left-wing ideology and narrow-mindedness."

Süddeutsche Zeitung 25.09.2009

The writer Yang Lian, who is living in exile in London, is less concerned with the "absolute power" that the Chinese propaganda ministry and the secret police have over writers, than that the writers themselves are so unpolitical. "Ninety-nine percent of the so-called intellectuals have stopped talking about real problems. Their material situation is hugely different from that of professors and intellectuals in 1989. Back then the intellectuals were the dregs of society. During the Cultural Revolution they were called 'the stinking nine'. Things are very different today. The intellectuals now wield power themselves. A university professor today can get lots of money for his projects. If a student in Bejing expresses a critical opinion you can be sure that his teachers will defend the government. There are very few liberals in the western sense and their voices are weak." Yang Lian does, however, mention Liu Xiaobo, the president of China's PEN club who was imprisoned in December for launching the Charter 08.