Spiegel Online 02.10.2010

Darwin and Einstein biographer Jürgen Neffe presented his "Libroid" to the world – a multimedia text scrolling device he hopes will preserve the essence of reading in the digital age, and that also allows writers to publish their work independently. (more on the website) Konrad Lischka was impressed but comments: "That this idea was conceived and paid for by an author out of his own pocket, says a lot about the situation in the book industry. Everyone in the branch is talking about the ebooks but hardly anyone has said anything about the new possibilities for presentation and narration."


Frankfurter Rundschau 02.10.2010

Peter Michalzik was in Stuttgart to see the premiere of Sibylle Berg's play "Missionen der Schönheit" (missions of beauty). More than half of his review is reserved for a description of the "civil war" drama raging outside in the city over the construction of a new train station (more here). But things inside the theatre don't seem to be have been much more peaceful. "They are all Judiths here, disillusioned avengers, destroyed women turned murderesses, cutting each other to pieces, commenting on it bitterly. 'Being beautiful only means you get raped more than the others.' Another Judith has just said that beauty is the only thing women have. And then she takes revenge, cutting off men's balls and heads, leaving them lying in the cellar."


Die Tageszeitung 04.10.2010

"I am not political. My opposition is critical, moral and aesthetic," says writer Liao Yiwu in an interview with Susanne Messer about his life and work in China. He explains what he expects from the West: "The West has to understand that a lot of people went underground after the 1989 massacre and still live there. These are the people who have never given up. What they need is a glimmer of hope. Some emergency funding would be good. I know one underground artist who did a performance on the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China last October. He ate sixty living flies. The West has to let him know that there are things that taste better than flies."


Die Tageszeitung 05.10.2010

Argentinian author Damian Tabarovksy explains in an interview how in 2001, he founded the publishing company Interzona Editora and what made that year so unique: "It was an incredible time in Argentina. In 2001, just when Argentina seemed to be on the point of collapse, a very intense cultural life – new Argentinian films, new theatre groups, new independent publishers - started blossoming. In the case of the publishing industry, this was linked to two factors: firstly a cultural shift was happening among younger publishers. We were waving goodbye to the idea of the old, prestigious publishing houses and looking for new ways of distribution and cheaper production forms. We had ceased to focus on the mainstream. Secondly, with the devaluation of the Argentinian currency, a whole new world of opportunities opened up."


Frankfurter Rundschau 05.10.2010

In an article on the pitfalls of Argentinian politics of memory, the writer Martin Caparros heavily criticises the Kirchners, the presidential couple, for deliberately falsifying history and presenting themselves as the heirs of the opposition to the dictatorship: "This is why so many Argentinians believe that those in power today were actually the political activists of 1970. Subsequently they believe that the exercise of power has brought these supposed revolutionary activists to show their cruellest face today: because they are lying, because they are issuing threats, because they are lining their pockets. This in turn allows the leaders of the establishment to revise the usual forms of memory. For decades, society pressured them into accepting the image of a good-natured younger generation, who died for their beliefs. Now, thanks to the current government's shameless manoeuvring, they now feel that they can return to the the image painted by the mass media in 1976 to justify the murders: that of political activists as violent, dangerous, false, evil people, full of hate and greed who got what they deserved."


Der Tagesspiegel 06.10.2010

On October 3, the new German president Christian Wulff gave a speech for the 20th anniversary of German Unity, in which he also spoke at length about immigration. He talked about country's Judaeo-Christian history and added that  Islam had become part of Germany. Author Monika Maron is not so sure: "When Christian Wulff talks about our Judaeo-Christian history, putting it on a par with Islam which, he says, now belongs to Germany, he is mixing up cultural traditions with religion. When we talk about our Judaeo-Christian cultural tradition, we don't just mean religion but also the criticism of religion and the enlightenment. Our Judaeo-Christian tradition not only includes Christians and Jews but everyone else who feels rooted in this culture, people of other faiths and atheists too. Judaeo-Christian history also contains our greatest crime – the genocide of the Jews. And that, too, had left its mark, making us fear ourselves more than anything, and this obviously blinds some people to other dangers."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 06.10.2010

A recent inventory of Russia's museums revealed that around 250,000 artworks are missing. Not all of them were stolen, according to the writer Oleg Yuriev, many of them were sold by the Soviet leaders for hard currency. "Back in the seventies there were rumours that the Soviet government had sold a lot of Rembrandt's and Titians in addition to the other works listed. These were secretly replaced with brilliant copies by a master counterfeiter who was at work in the Hermitage and later disappeared without a trace. Since then not even the employees at the Hermitage know what is real and what is fake in their own museum. This is postmodernism born of the spirit of Stalinism!"


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 07.10.2010

"This land has become uninhabitable," fumes Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare, in an article on the ruling clique which has allowed Nigeria to sink into corruption, inefficiency and a lack of prospects. "Nigeria's leaders are thieves in more ways than one. First of all, they go all out to steal our money, money which should be used for the development of this country. Secondly, they have stolen our voting mandate, because they continue to interfere in the elections and push people upon us who we never voted for. The third point – and this is the most important one of all – is that they have stolen our moral essence. Nigeria has become a country in which is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between right and wrong."


Die Welt 07.10.2010

Melinda Nadj Abonji, the winner of this year's German Book Prize is a Hungarian-Serbian born writer who lives in Switzerland. Her book "Falcons Without Falcons" (excerpt in English) describes how an ethnic Hungarian family from Vojvodina in Serbia relocates to Switzerland and opens a restaurant. She tells Paul Jandl: "My relationship to today's Switzerland is not without friction because I am extremely sceptical about political developments there. The achievements of the racism convention have been hollowed out by the right-wing burgher movement. But things are not so different in other parts of society. People pretend to be liberal, but it's very different when it comes to immigration."