Das 4. Internationale Literaturfestival Berlin (21.9. bis 2.10.2004) stellt 100 eingeladene Autoren mit Foto, Biographie in deutscher und englischer Sprache sowie einer Auswahl ihrer wichtigsten Publikationen vor. Aufgrund der großen Resonanz wird der Katalog in ähnlicher Konzeption, wie 2003 erscheinen. Jeder Autor wurde gebeten, eine individuelle Antwort zum Motto "Make answer, Muse!" zu senden. Ihre spontanen Reaktionen - ob Foto, Collage, Gedicht oder object trouvé - wurden gestalterisch integriert. Was tun die Dichter, wenn die Musen schweigen, die Inspiration versagt, die Feder bockt, die Tinte stockt? Selbst Shakespeare litt unter dem "Schreibblock", wie seine ungeduldige Anrufung der Musen zeigt: "Wie, Muse, willst du deine Säumnis sühnen? Du schweigst, wo Wahrheit trägt der Schönheit Kleid, Die engverbunden dem Geliebten dienen, Und so tust du und bist dadurch geweiht. Antworte, Muse! Sagst du mir wohl gar, Wahrheit erstrahle schön auch ohne dich, Und ohne Kunst sei echte Schönheit wahr, Das Beste sei das Beste stets an sich? Er braucht dich nicht! Deshalb willst du nicht singen? Das ist kein Grund! Denn ist es nicht dein Amt, Ihm übers goldne Grab noch Ruhm zu bringen, Daß hell sein Lob in fernster Zukunft flammt? Tu deinen Dienst! Ich lehre dich die Art, Daß ihn, gleich uns, die spätste Zeit gewahrt."

Since Unification and the end of the Cold War, Berlin has witnessed a series of uncommonly intense social, political, and cultural transformations. While positioning itself as a creative center populated by young and cosmopolitan global citizens, the “New Berlin” is at the same time a rich site of historical memory, defined inescapably by its past even as it articulates German and European hopes for the future. Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin presents a fascinating cross-section of life in Germany’s largest city, revealing the complex ways in which globalization, ethnicity, economics, memory, and national identity inflect how its urban spaces are inhabited and depicted.

How has the Internet changed literary culture? 2nd Place, N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature by The Electronic Literature Organization Reports of the book’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Books are flourishing in the Internet era—widely discussed and reviewed in online readers’ forums and publicized through book trailers and author blog tours. But over the past twenty-five years, digital media platforms have undeniably transformed book culture. Since Amazon’s founding in 1994, the whole way in which books are created, marketed, publicized, sold, reviewed, showcased, consumed, and commented upon has changed dramatically. The digital literary sphere is no mere appendage to the world of print—it is where literary reputations are made, movements are born, and readers passionately engage with their favorite works and authors. In The Digital Literary Sphere, Simone Murray considers the contemporary book world from multiple viewpoints. By examining reader engagement with the online personas of Margaret Atwood, John Green, Gary Shteyngart, David Foster Wallace, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and even Jonathan Franzen, among others, Murray reveals the dynamic interrelationship of print and digital technologies. Drawing on approaches from literary studies, media and cultural studies, book history, cultural policy, and the digital humanities, this book asks: What is the significance of authors communicating directly to readers via social media? How does digital media reframe the “live” author-reader encounter? And does the growing army of reader-reviewers signal an overdue democratizing of literary culture or the atomizing of cultural authority? In exploring these questions, The Digital Literary Sphere takes stock of epochal changes in the book industry while probing books’ and digital media’s complex contemporary coexistence.

This book is in part an anthology of the best of accounts of the World Writers Conference and also an overview of the lively wide-ranging global debate that the authors' views engendered among the many writers who took part.

This volume provides a ready introduction and practical guide to the Chechen people, including chapters on history, religion, politics, economy, culture, literature and media.

African literature has never been more visible than it is today. Whereas Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o defined a golden generation of African writers in the 20th century, a new generation of “Afropolitan” writers including Chimamanda Adichie, Teju Cole, Taiye Selasi, and NoViolet Bulawayo have taken the world by storm by snatching up prestigious awards and selling millions of copies of their works. But what is the new, increasingly fashionable and marketable, Afropolitan vision of Africa's place in the world that they offer? How does it differ from that of previous generations? Why do some dissent? Afropolitanism refuses to reinforce images of Africa in world media as merely poor, war-torn, diseased, and constantly falling into chaos. By complicating the image of Africa as a hapless victim, Afropolitanism focuses on the wide-ranging influence Africa has on the world. However, some have characterized this kind of writing as light, populist fare that panders to Western audiences. Afropolitan Literature as World Literature examines the controversy surrounding Afropolitan literature in light of the unprecedented circulation of culture made possible by globalization, and ultimately argues for expanding its geographic and temporal boundaries.

The fourteen chapters in this anthology feature original analyses of contemporary German-language literary texts, films, political cartoons, cabaret, and other types of performance. The artworks display a wide spectrum of humor modes, such as irony, satire, the grotesque, Jewish humor, and slapstick, as responses to unification with the accompanying euphoria, but also alienation and dislocation. Kerstin Hensel’s Lärchenau, Christoph Hein’s Landnahme, and vignette collections by Jakob Hein (Antrag auf ständige Ausreise und andere Mythen der DDR) and Wladimir Kaminer (Es gab keinen Sex im Sozialismus) are interpreted as examples of the grotesque. The popular films Lola rennt, Sonnenallee, Herr Lehmann, NVA, Alles auf Zucker!, and Mein Führer—Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler are reexamined through the lens of traditional and more recent humor or comic book theories. The contributors focus on how each artwork enriches four prominent postwall German cultural trends: post-unification identity reconstruction, Vergangenheitsbewältigung (including Hitler humor), New German Popular Literature (Christian Kracht’s ironic subtexts), and immigrant perspectives (a “third voice” in the East-West binary reflected here pointedly in Eulenspiegel cartoons). To date, no other scholarly work provides as comprehensive an overview of the diverse strategies of humor used in the past two decades in German-speaking countries.