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After co-founder Florian Schneider's departure from Kraftwerk, DW-WORLD's Jefferson Chase muses about a group that meant far more to pop music than most casual listeners realize. ...
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The era of the book is over, publisher's editor Tom Engelhardt declares in The Nation. In the New Statesman Jonathan Derbyshire turns his thoughts to Weltliteratur since Goethe. In Polityka, Adam Michnik praises the Communists for passing their exams in Polish patriotism. Difficulty as a virtue has abandoned the realm of literature to be embraced by the computer game, John Lanchester writes in the London Review of Books. Standpoint takes Germany to task for its love of Russia. The New York Times tells the story of Mexico's victorious battle against the "culture of poverty". The Economist honours H.M., the man without memories.
This year Turkey was the guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair. We introduce the books that attracted the most critical attention.
In Outlook India Arundhati Roy analyses the nature of terrorism. In the London Review of Books, Tariq Ali describes an "honour killing" in his own family. In the Observator Cultural, the writer Mircea Horia Simionescu describes how useful it is to be the victim of infidelity. Elet es Irodalom examines the detrimental influence of the primitive Janos Kadar. In Gazeta Wyborcza Victor Erofeev wishes the credit crunch would hurt Russia more, so that it would be forced to change. In Lettre International Peter Nadas describes the legacy of simulation which had the Eastern Bloc in its grip. The New York Review of Books publishes the Chinese "Charter 2008".
Kurt Flasch's book "Kampfplätze der Philosophie" strides across the battlefields of philosophy from Augustine to Voltaire. After a weekend spent scribbling furiously in its margins, Arno Widmann was enlightened, exhilarated and hungry for more.
The age of privatisation is over. Politics not the market is responsible for promoting the common good. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas talks to Thomas Assheuer about the necessity of an international world order. (Photo: Wolfram Huke)
This year's prestigious Büchner Prize went to Austrian writer Josef Winkler. He talks to Paul Jandl about dung heaps, patriarchs, the fear of speechlessness and the elegance of John Paul II's coffin. Photo © Jerry Bauer / SV
Iceland was determined to be a globalisation winner at any price. German-Icelandic writer Kristof Magnusson looks into the culture and history of this mini-state to find out how it became buried in debt.
Why Austria's far-right under Heinz-Christian Strache and the late Jörg Haider are celebrating their election triumph. By Doron Rabinovici
Russian author Arkady Babchenko rose to international fame with the remorseless description of the Chechen conflict in his autobiographical novel "The Colour of War". Babchenko was also the millitary correspondent for the Novaya Gazeta during the recent Russian military operation in South Ossetia. Jörg Plath met up with him in Berlin.
The legendary German poets, Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, met and fell in love in Vienna 1948. Their electric and torturous correspondence, which continued until 1961, has now been collected in book form for the first time. Ina Hartwig on what was probably the most complicated love story in post-war Germany.
The dead body of Russian artist Anna Alchuk was pulled out of the river Spree in April this year. She and her husband, philosopher Michail Ryklin, had moved to Berlin in November 2007 after life in Russia became intolerable as a direct consequence of Alchuk's participation in the exhibition "Caution: Religion!". Michail Ryklin looks to his wife's tormented diary entries to help him approximate the causes of her death.
The six finalists for the German Book Prize 2008, an annual award for the best German language novel, have now been announced. Signandsight.com presents English excerpts of the shortlisted titles for the first time.
Emotional chaos in the elderly and the best aesthetic for folds and wrinkles. Birgit Glombitza talks to Andreas Dresen about geriatric love and sex, and his new film "Wolke 9".
At the Durban Conference against Racism in 2001, anti-colonialism bared its anti-Semitic face. The UN is planning a follow-up conference next year in Geneva. Pascal Bruckner tells democracies to keep their distance.
Radovan Karadzic might be on trial in The Hague, but he can sit back in his Hugo Boss suit, confident that his work is done. His heirs are young, healthy and full of hate. And as far as they are concerned, the war is far from over. Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic dreams of a procession of collective shame and a ritual of repentance.
Ligeti the gesamtkunstwerk, Ligeti the Socrates-Ligeti, Ligeti the volcano. Hungarian composer György Kurtág spoke at a memorial session of the Order Pour le Mérite in Berlin about his lifelong friend, György Ligeti, who died on June 12, 2006. 
The novel is blooming in the Urals, where the children of the former technology elite are letting their imaginations run riot. By Sonja Margolina
The deportation of Romanians from Italy in the wake of a murder committed by an ethnic Roma has caused a stir in Romania. Yet whereas Romanians object to this discrimination abroad, they fail to see that at home the Roma are treated with nothing but hatred and disdain, and neither the Church nor the state is doing anything about it. By Mircea Cartarescu