Iliya Troyanov was born in Sofia in 1965. Aged six, he and his family fled to Germany where they were…
Beat Mazenauer
No to Broadcasting Licence Fees! In Switzerland, a battle is raging about information and the media. Swiss national-conservative and neo-liberal…
Arno Camenisch and Dana Grigorcea are two leading voices for young Swiss literature. They both enjoy a good reception with the audience,…
In his enchanting novel Grand Hotel (2006, German translation 2008) Jaroslav Rudiš describes the Czechs as a nation “that is afraid of movement”.…
This year’s “Austrian Book Trade Honorary Award for Tolerance in Thought and Action” (Ehrenpreis des Österreichischen Buchhandels für Toleranz in…
Mathias Enard and Dževad Karahasan present a sympathetic, albeit contrasting view of the Orient and of Oriental culture. This is…
Exile is a grave. Historical epochs, things and peoples vanish in it. Yet, often they are suddenly back in the…
In his novel Compass, the well-travelled polyglot and writer Mathias Enard develops a counter-programme to the populist mainstream of being ‘anti-’open…
Between Two Cultures The favourite prediction about the ‘conflict of cultures’ is an ideological construct that quickly loses obvious meaning…
Barbarianism Without End Culture is a thin varnish covering the chasms of barbarianism. Disasters churn it up; they are the…
Magic Reportage In the books written by Hans Christoph Buch, the sun often gleams from a blank sky. He has…
In The Invisible Cities (Le Città invisibili), Italo Calvino wrote, “The hell of the living is not something that will be”.…
