Johannesburg - Germany and South Africa - Literature

Spoken Word: The Stage Is the Stage and It Has Its Requirements

(24 July 2013) Score cards and the jury’s calculator – the new form of poetic expression featured at The Spoken Word Project competition may take getting used to, but don’t let it frazzle you. Remember: Poetry begins with noncompliance. By Kgafela oa MagogodiMore ...

Wolfgang Müller wrote a book about West Berlin’s subculture in the 1980s. Photo: Tom Neubauer

Island of Spare Time – Wolfgang Müller’s Book about West Berlin in the 1980s

West Berlin’s subculture created social spaces for creativity and it was imperative that their stories be told. This has now been done by Wolfgang Müller.More ...

Adelbert-von-Chamisso-awardees: above f.l.t.r.: Yoko Tawada, photo: Yves Noir; Emine Sevgi Özdamar, photo: Helga Kneidl; Libuše Moníková, photo: Renate von Mangoldt; below f.l.t.r.: Galsan Tschinag, photo: Rosemarie von Schnoy; Ilija Trojanow, photo: Yves Noir; Catalin Dorian Florescu, photo: Yvonne Böhler

Hardly Anybody Any Longer Says “Immigrant” – German literature by authors whose mother tongue is not German

It has become perfectly natural to see in Rafik Schami and Terézia Mora notable German-language authors.More ...

‘Open Mike’ – Fireworks with the Buddha

The Berlin ‘Open Mike’ entered this year its twentieth edition. For the first time the competition for young German prose and poetry took place in its home port of Neukölln – but it arrived long ago.More ...

“Books are Friends that always have Time for Us” – On the Death of Otfried Preußler (02/21/2013)

The children’s book author Otfried Preußler died on 18 February 2013 in Prien am Chiemsee. He was 89 years old.More ...

Event within the event series „Sprache-Heimat-Exil“ of the International Artists House, Villa Waldberta in Munich with Maynat Kurbanova, Adam Guzuev, Dirk Sager, Marie Bäumer (f.l.t.r.); photo: Volker Derlath

As on a Boat – Lives of writers in German exile

In cooperation with the German government, the writers-in-exile program of the PEN Center of Germany provides threatened journalists and writers in exile with help.More ...

Opening of the Weltempfang, 04.10.2010; © Alexander Heimann

The Weltempfang – Frankfurt Welcomes the World

In 2010 the International Center and the Translators Center of the Frankfurt Book Fair were merged into the Weltempfang – Center for Politics, Literature and Translation.More ...

Nibbling, Zapping and Hyperlinks – The New Reading Habits

The digitalization of texts has changed not only our access to literature, but also our reading habits.More ...

Prosanova-Festival: „Inselsprachen“ with Peter Neumann; photo: Judith Grobe

A Horse Trots Out of the Text: Literary Festivals in Germany

The whole year round, in small cities and large, in green meadows and in dark clubs, there are countless literary festivals. Where does this trend come from?More ...

Reader at the Frankfurt Book Fair; © Frankfurter Buchmesse/Hirth

A Land of Readers: The Book Market in Germany

In view of the digital revolution, many critics in Germany again see the end of the Gutenberg galaxy as imminent. The numbers, however, show that the medium book, like the German book market, is still alive and going strong.More ...

Publishers Invitation Programme to the Cape Town Book Fair 2012

The Goethe-Institut, in co-operation with the Cape Town Book Fair and the African Publishers‘ Network (APNET), once again conducted a publishers invitation programme to the Cape Town Book Fair (15. – 17. June 2012). The aim of this initiative is to support the participation of publishing houses from sub-Saharan African countries at the Cape Town Book Fair and to provide training and networking opportunities for publishers from this region.More ...