Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen.
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Fiction / Nonfiction / Political Books
Political Books
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday researched their
biography "Mao" for eleven years until nothing remained of the idealised image of the Great
Chairman.The Spiegel put the book on its cover and the SZ agrees that
if the author's take is accurate, China's history will have
to be retold "on several important points." The NZZ sees the biography
as a "detailed collection of shameless acts," the FAZ praises its
liveliness and density, while the FR considers it more of a criminal
charge than a nuanced biography.
German-Israeli historian and Middle East expert Dan Diner explores in "Versiegelte
Zeit" (sealed time) the controversial question of why the Arab world remains so
undeniably backward. He takes the Arab Human Development Report, which
has been published annually by the United Nations since 2002, and
discovers several interesting and shocking facts: for instance, that in the entire Arab
world, there are four book translations for every million people, compared with 519 in Hungary or 920 in Spain. Diner explains this
with the omnipresence of the sacral, particularly in Arabic speech and
text, which makes change virtually impossible. The SZ does not support
all his arguments but finds the book "stimulating and intelligent."
Andre Glucksmann's investigation of hate as a phenomena that is
spreading in the world, has sparked much discussion. The NZZ finds
Gluckmann's endeavor to locate evil right in the
midst of our modern civilisation "absolutely correct"; at the same
time, it would rather not have to look so closely. The FR considers the author's greatest accomplishment his analysis of the psychological levels of hate based on the Medea
myth, while suspecting that his argument is slightly one-sided. Die
Zeit is delighted that Glucksmann has confronted hate so actively, while
the SZ begs for a little more equanimity. (Features by Andre Glucksmann in English here)
Wolfgang Kraushaar's revelations about "Die Bombe im Jüdischen
Gemeindehaus" (The bomb in the Jewish community centre) has provoked heated debate. The main controversy is not over Albert Fichter's
involvement but rather Kraushaar's insistence that a pervasive anti-Semitism
was at work among the 68ers. The FR hopes the book will precipitate self-reflection
by the Left, and the Berliner Zeitung is most interested in the role of the
state as an agent provocateur. Götz Aly states in Die Welt, "The
German 68ers were wretchedly similar to their parents." (See
an interview with Albert Fichter's brother here)
Both the taz and the FR are extremely impressed by "Despoten vor
Europas Haustür" (despots on Europe's doorstep) in which Tunisian
human rights experts Sihem Bensedrine and Omar Mestiri demonstrate how
the EU's immigration and security policies serve to stabilise the
authoritarian regimes in North Africa, at the expense of the opposition
and human rights. Tunisia in particular has been only too happy to
introduce anti-terrorism measures that render any kind of opposition
illegal. Bensedrine and Mestiri (director of the online magazine Kalima) describe the hatred, desperation and
hopelessness that EU policy is causing in North Africa and show how the
region is becoming a hotbed of precisely the kind of extremist violence against which Europe is trying to protect itself.
High praise from both ends of Germany's political spectrum for the German translation of "The Rebel Sell"). The FAZ and the
taz agree that Andrew Potter and Joseph Heath's thorough-going critique
of the so-called anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist counter culture is
worth a read. The Canadian authors argue that the proponents of
anti-globalisation - the punks, hippies, no globals and Naomi Kleins -
are all essential fuel in the capitalistic machine. In the taz, Robert
Misik takes the thought a step further: the socialist Left has always
wanted to guarantee simple folk a good life, while at the same
time denouncing their pursuit of "wretched materialism". Misik
concludes that "the fight against all the rules should not be confused
with the fight against tyranny."
On a similar note, Georg Franck's "Mentaler Kapitalismus" has been met
with both enthusiasm and scepticism. Following up on his previous book
"The Economy of Attention" (more), Franck investigates further the political
and aesthetic impact of the pervasiveness of advertising. Franck sees
the much avowed "reification of culture" transforming into a
"culturisation of all things": the rich of today are those who get lots
of media attention. While the taz enjoys many of Franck's observations
– such as the fact that "people who would previously have landed
in the nut house are the television stars of today" – the FAZ feels that
Franck is out of his theoretical depth with Derrida and Wittgenstein,
trying to turn his theory into a "model of explanation for the entire
world".
Fiction / Nonfiction / Political Books
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A precision engineer of the emotions, Peter Nadas traces the European upheavals of the past century in his colossal and epic novel "Parallel Stories", which was published in English in December. The core and epicentre of the novel is the body, which bears the marks of history and trauma. In his seemingly chaotic intertwining of lives and stories, Nadas penetrates the depths of the human animal with unique insight. A review by Joachim Sartorius 
The USA and the USSR should not simply be thought of as arch enemies of the Cold War. Beyond ideology, the two nations were deeply interested in one another. Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov were thrilled by the American Way of Life in 1935/6, John Steinbeck and Robert Capa praised the sheer vitality of the Russian people in 1947. Historian Karl Schlögel reviews a perfect pair of travel journals. Photo by Ilf and Petrov.
Turkish-born author, actor and director Emine Sevgi Özdamar was recently awarded the Alice Salomon Prize for Poetics. Coming to West Berlin in 1965, Özdamar first learned German at the age of 19. After stage school she went on to become the directorial assistant to Benno Besson and Matthias Langhoff at the Volksbühne in East Berlin while still living in West Berlin. Harald Jähner warmly lauds the author's uniquely visual sense of her acquired language and her ability to overcome the seemingly insurmountable dividing line through the city.
Nadezhda Mandelstam's personal memories of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, her intimate friend, offer a unique and moving testimony to friendship and resistance over decades of persecution. Published only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the text is still unavailable in English but has recently been translated into German. A unique historical document, celebrating an intellectual icon in an age of horror. Portrait of Akhmatova
This year is the 200th anniversary of the death of German writer Heinrich von Kleist. The author Gertrud Leutenegger has a very Kleistian afternoon on Elba, when she encounters the Marquise von O in the waiting room of a very strange eye doctor. 
Eugen Ruge has won the German Book Prize with his novel "In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts" (In times of fading light), an autobiographical story of an East German family. The award is presented to the best German-language novel just before the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Here we present this year's six shortlisted authors and exclusive English translations of excerpts from their novels.
Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu escaped into exile in Germany in July this year. His new book about his life in Chongqing prison has just been published in German as "Für Ein Lied und Hundert Lieder". Both book and author have a life-threatening odyssey behind them. I am overjoyed that Liao Yiwu is here with us and not at home in prison. By Herta Müller
No other European city suffered more in World War II than Leningrad under siege, when over a million people lost their lives. Russian literature delivers a rich testimony of the events which have been all but forgotten by the West. Only a few works, though, also do the disaster aesthetic justice. By Oleg Yuriev 
In this apology for the vice of reading, Bora Cosic describes the magnificent and fantastic discoveries of one of its practitioners – revealing how texts contain what we bring to them, how we sometimes read without reading and how books are not only found in books but many other places.Â
This year's German International Literature Award goes to "Venushaar", a Russian novel that starts out as a dialogue between an asylum seeker and an immigration officer, and opens into a vast choir of voices. A conversation with its author Mikhail Shishkin, a literary giant in his own country, and his German translator Andreas Tretner. By Ekkehard Knörer. (Image: Mikhail Shishkin © Yvonne Böhler)
Algeria's youth: Frustrated, isolated and in the stranglehold of clandestine political structures. Young Algerians are rebelling against being locked in traditional political and social structures, but have no chance of a national uprising like that in Tunisia, says Algerian author Boualem Sansal. An interview with Reiner Wandler. 
On what would have been Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran's 100th birthday, Suhrkamp has published a volume of his essays from the 1930s, "Über Deutschland". Effervescing with enthusiasm for Hitler and fascist ideas, they cast a dark shadow over his later writing. Fritz Raddatz wishes he'd never had to read such abominations and bids a former companion a bitter farewell. Photo: E.M. Cioran © Surhrkamp Verlag
Andre Müller Germany's most insightful and most feared interviewer is dead. Elfriede Jelinek said of him in her obituary: "Andre Müller goes all the way into people and then he makes them into language, and only then do they become themselves." Read his interviews with Ingmar Bergman and Hitler's sculptor Arno Breker in English. Photo courtesy 
Serbia was the country in focus at this year's Leipzig Book Fair – its extensive literature seems to be bound up in the straitjacket of politics. Serbia is having a hard time with Europe, and Europe is having a hard time with Serbia. Although there are signs of a softening stance, the country is still locked up in the self-imposed nationalist isolation into which it manoeuvred itself as the aggressor in the Yugoslavian war of secession. A visit there inspires mixed feelings. By Jörg Plath