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....
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The publication of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has kicked off a heavy debate which - as EU's the recent climate protection plans show - is affecting political decision-making. The NZZ feuilleton asked writers from far and wide to report on climate change from a personal point of view. The series begins with Swiss author Leo Tuor, who has felt the effects of the Earth's warming right up to his belly button.
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German writers make a big splash this season, in all age categories. And we meet fairies at a holiday camp in Sweden, ill-starred souls in Denmark, Piedmont people-smugglers and down-and-out Bulgarian writers. Nonfiction highlights include works by Ian Buruma and Anna Politkovskaya, histories of the Cold War and Prussia, and a sudden overview of contemporary art.
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Political portraits of the Netherlands and Russia come from Ian Buruma and Anna Politkovskaya. British historian Christopher Clark has revealed new sides to Prussia. The ever so well behaved Adolph Freiherr von Knigge has regained dignity in a new biography. And Jörg Heiser finally helps us with an overview of contemporary art.
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Like a hunter-gatherer, Volker Michels has been foraging for traces of the life and work of author Hermann Hesse for thirty years now. For his private Hesse archive in Offenbach, he collects and cross-references all of Hesse's letters, pictures and manuscripts he can find. Roman Bucheli portrays an archivist on the brink of obsession. (Image © Gret Widmann)
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The case of anti-Communist Romanian novelist Vintila Horia (1915-1992) - condemned by some as pro-fascist - illustrates the difficulty of establishing a literary canon after the end of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. Now, some Romanian intellectuals want to rehabilitate his image. Can the man be viewed separately from his art? By Richard Wagner
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Ingo Schulze has reached new literary heights in his latest collection of short stories. Full of digressions and distractions, full of calculated humility, Schulze turns what seems to be non-art into art in its highest form. By Ulrich Greiner
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It was only with the end of the Soviet Union that Russians got the chance to get discover their own 20th century literature. Forbidden authors like Nabokov, Mandelstam, Brodsky and Kharms became hugely popular. But until today the most enduring are the Oberiuts, a group of avant-garde poets from the 20s and 30s. By Olga Martynova
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With her first novel "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf," Silke Scheuermann has written her way into the top league of young authors. The story is, once again, of young women saddled with privilege and boredom. But the language is cool, underwater movement and its author as intelligent as she is subtle. By Ulrich Greiner
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Tadeusz Borowski survived Auschwitz, became a Communist, and committed suicide in 1951. A new edition of his stories was published in German this year: morally questionable, but a milestone in Holocaust literature nonetheless. Even Dante's "Inferno" pales by comparison. By Arno Lustiger
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Svetlana Geier's magnificent translation of Dostoevsky's "The Adolescent" brings to an end her monumental project of translating all five of the author's "elephants", or major novels, into German. Although many disparage the book as muddled, in her eyes it is Dostoevsky at his most modern. Martin Ebel has paid a visit to the Grande Dame of Russian-German translation. (Image © Niklaus Stauss)
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Iraqi-German writer Najem Wali feels that the Arab Writers Union has a problem or two. It's overtly anti-Semitic, anti-democratic and opposed to freedom of speech. The Union doesn't realise that literature is not the product of conferences and pamphlets, but rather of freedom.
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Thomas Pynchon's latest novel "Against the Day" got panned by critics in the USA. Denis Scheck sees this as evidence of rampant anti-intellectualism. He maintains that the book is a masterpiece: a swan song to anarchism, an incisive look at post 9/11 America, and a hilarious romp through literary genres.
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Germany as a culture does not correspond to the German nation. Which means that the much-quoted truth that the Germans were united by their literature or their language has always also been a lie. For German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani the most German of German writers is none other than Franz Kafka.
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Once relegated to the minor leagues of the "developing world", India is now rising to the status of a leading power - and not only technologically and economically. Its ongoing social revolution is reflected in the literary realm as well. Claudia Kramatschek introduces a new generation of writers, a far cry from the country's senior cultural ambassadors of yesteryear.
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Aka Morchiladze is a celebrity in Georgia and little more than an unpronouncable name beyond. That may change with "Santa Esperenza." His first book available in translation is the tragic, crazy, multi-coloured chronicle of a fantasy archipelago. Sonja Zekri pays a visit to the author in Tiflis.
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