The seventh installment of Festival Neue Literatur (FNL), the only US festival to showcase fiction originally written in German, once again hosts six of the most important emerging and established writers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. They will join US writers in a series of conversations and readings at venues throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The featured writers are
Xaver Bayer and
Vea Kaiser (Austria);
Iris Hanika and
Christopher Kloeble (Germany);
Sibylle Berg and
Pedro Lenz (Switzerland); and
James Hannaham and
Jenny Offill (United States).
The theme of the 2016 festival is
Seriously Funny. On the one hand, the focus on humor is meant as a counterpoint to a certain stereotype of German-language culture and literature as particularly humorless, grim, or heavy. On the other hand, the theme is intended to go further than that and explore the interdependence of humor and seriousness, how literary humor helps us navigate existential predicaments and even pain and trauma. Rather than an escape from serious questions and profound themes, the humor of the featured works is a way of grappling with such matters. It is to be found less in this or that funny line or moment and more in the authors’ overall way of seeing and depicting the world.
For the full festival program, please view the
FNL website.
The festival is curated by
Ross Benjamin, a translator of German-language literature living in Nyack, New York. Benjamin received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on the first English translation of Franz Kafka’s complete, unexpurgated
Diaries, to be published by Liveright/Norton. His previous translations include Friedrich Hölderlin’s
Hyperion, Kevin Vennemann’s
Close to Jedenew, Joseph Roth’s
Job, and Clemens J. Setz’s
Indigo. His literary criticism has appeared in
The Times Literary Supplement,
Bookforum,
The Nation, and other publications.
FNL is presented in partnership with Deutsches Haus at NYU, the German Book Office, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Pro Helvetia, the Consulate of Switzerland, and the German Consulate General New York.
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