Michael Ruetz: 1968: The Uncomfortable Time

1968 ? for some the year awakens memories, for others it is history. Images like those created by Michael Ruetz (born 1940) play a crucial role in our collective memory, mediating between contemporary witnesses and later generations.... more more

GoetheInstitute

The impertinent muse

Wednesday 5 September, 2007

Ann Cotten is the poster girl for Germany's poetry jet set. She publishes manifestos at 6 in the morning, pours through dictionaries of foreign words and takes very fruitful lunch breaks. By Ina Hartwig
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A masterpiece of character

Monday 27 August, 2007

A new edition of the Dutch classic "Character" has just come out. For Dutch author Cees Nooteboom, the novel is a timeless masterpiece of cold fire. Ferdinand Bordewijk wrote it with an etching needle and today's readers are still at his mercy.
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"Richness, beauty, horror"

Wednesday 15 August, 2007

"Keep on keeping on" is Walter Kempowski's motto and he applies this unique pertinacity to collecting German life stories. Critically ill, the great writer remains true to himself to the end. Instead of getting sentimental, he looks back matter-of-factly. By Peer Teuwsen (Editor's note: Walter Kempowski passed away on October 5th 2007 in Rostock. We put this interview, published earlier this year, back onto our homepage in his remembrance.Image © Helmut Fricke
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Miracles every day

Friday 10 August, 2007

The very last feature in our NZZ climate change series. Author George Saunders describes the strange state of the climate in post-Gore America.
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When crime fiction is a crime

Wednesday 8 August, 2007

Crime writer Amir Valle is one Cuba's most promising young authors. In 2006 he won the Vargas-Llosa literature prize. But even then he had already fallen into disfavour with the Cuban Culture Ministry. Since 2005 he has been living in involuntary exile in Germany. By Knut Henkel
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Fools' gold and carbon credits

Monday 23 July, 2007

To round off the NZZ series of writers on climate change, Zakes Mda of South Africa takes on the trade in carbon credits. Instead of providing an incentive to control pollution, it gives the world's wealthy classes carte blanche to pollute with clear consciences.
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The Sheikha's Book Club

Monday 9 July, 2007

A land of hidden longings: Ulla Lenze is the first German writer to be invited into the inner sanctum of Sheikha Shamma's literary salon, in the United Arab Emirates' desert palace of Al Ain. Lenze takes us along for the ride.
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Grapes from Greenland

Wednesday 4 July, 2007

Continuing the NZZ's series of first-hand accounts of climate change by international writers, Danish author Jorn Riel tells of his psychedelic visions for the future of the Arctic.
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Slovenian saga of beauty and cruelty

Monday 2 July, 2007

Truly a novel of the century. With his "Die Zugereisten" (the newcomers), an autobiographical trilogy of reminiscence, Lojze Kovacic bequeathed a masterpiece to the Slovenians, as brilliant as it is bulky. By Wolfgang Schneider
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Meteorologists versus shamans

Wednesday 27 June, 2007

Continuing the NZZ's series of first-hand accounts of climate change by international writers, Siberian-born Juri Rytcheu pokes fun at polar meteorologists and admits he wouldn't mind it getting a bit warmer.
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World authors on climate change

Coinciding with the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper asked writers from around the world for their perspectives. Read how global warming has effected lives from Bombay to the high Alps, from The Netherlands to Nigeria and beyond. We present stories by Hans Maarten van den Brink, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Romesh Gunesekera, Kiran Nagarkar, Leo Tuor and more...
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From Bombay with smog

Monday 11 June, 2007

In a new sequel of the NZZ's climate change series, Kiran Nagarkar affords a lung-clogging view from Bombay, where this winter the smog was a block of dirty concrete that started a couple of metres from where you stood and stretched all the way to the sky.
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Rain

Thursday 7 June, 2007

Continuing the NZZ's climate change series, Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera tells how everything is perfect for the model farmer with a mathematical mind. Until the rain messes up his calculations.
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Black Christmas

Wednesday 30 May, 2007

In the NZZ's climate change series, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells how Christmas changed in 2006, with choking heat and clammy bedsheets. Editor's note: The author has been announced the 2007 winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction
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Underwater

Thursday 24 May, 2007

Continuing with the series, originally published in the NZZ, of first-hand accounts of climate change by international writers, Hans Maarten van den Brink talks of arks and dykes and watersport and the Dutch obsession with the sea.
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