Literature and Knowledge

The Leipzig Book Fair – after the Frankfurt fair the most important annual convention in the sector – was cancelled at short notice in 2022 because of the pandemic. The discussion that flared up as a result is only the beginning of a fundamental debate on the future of book fairs.
 

According to Judith Schalansky, author of Verzeichnis einiger Verluste, the book is like a close relationship to someone she’s known since childhood.
 

Be it with utopian visions of the world or portraits of Berlin millennials – the novels by the writer Leif Randt illuminate the present. Any pop-cultural references, however, arise more from intuition rather than intention, says the author.

Christoph Hassenzahl works in the licensing department of the Suhrkamp Verlag, where he is, among other things, in charge of East Asian countries. We asked him four questions about the Social Translating Project, especially in regard to the discourse on Judith Schalansky’s “An Inventory of Certain Losses”.

Writer Judith Schalansky talks of loss, of forgetting ­– and of the book as the perfect medium