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. more
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
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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
Photo: Sreten Ugricic
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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.
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Dragan Klaic returned to Belgrade to give a theatre seminar. It happened to be on the same day that rioting and protests against Kosovo's independence flared up in a replay of a scenario from the late eighties. An eye witness account of self-destructive Serbian theatrics.
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Serbia is reclaiming Kosovo as the "cradle of the nation" while showing nothing but contempt for its population. Serbian writer Vladimir Arsenijevic outlines the calamitous relationship of his compatriots to the Albanians.
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Anyone who counts Danube Swabians, Slovenians and Italians among his forefathers and lives as a Bosnian Croat first in Sarajevo and then in Zagreb, is entitled to call his birth a political project. Miljenko Jergovic tells the story of his family, of people whose identities have more to do with what they are not, than what they are.
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Austrian author and playwright Peter Handke's political stance on Serbia has not been easy for Western intellectuals to swallow. With the recent scandal of the Heinrich Heine Prize - which was awarded to Handke and then retracted - the writer's views are back in the spotlight. In an in-depth interview with Martin Meyer and Andreas Breitenstein, Handke tries to clarify his understanding of what happened in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
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"As I today, after many years, start off on a journey to the land of my birth, I feel as if I were leaving for Africa or Alaska. I am leaving for the unknown lands of my past without actually knowing why." Serbian author Bora Cosic visits his divided homeland for the first time since 1992.
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