Writer, poet and lecturer Nenden Lilis Aisyah on the development of Indonesian literature, politics, mass killings and massacres, feminism and the modern approach to Islam in Indonesia.
In "Like a Wild God", Gianfranco Calligarich transforms a forgotten, cruel piece of the puzzle that is Italian colonial history into a postmodern, refracted, sparkling and contemporary mosaic.
What else does a black female writer have to do in this world? What does she do with the rage that consumes her when she is again marginalized or used as "the attraction" for show? And what does she do with her throbbing shame?
In "About Leo Perutz", Daniel Kehlmann enthuses about this forgotten writer and shows why his novels are still worth reading decades after their publication
Macedonian Vlado Janevski shows in his new novel "Who Killed Edgar Allan Poe" the truth within the truth or the novel within the novel - an amazing endeavour
Álvaro Enrigue’s „You Dreamed Of Empires“ takes a complex and vivid look on the first step of the Spanish colonisation of what was then Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City
"Worlds of Slavery - A Comparative History" was published in 2021 by Éditions du Seuil in France. It covers the history of slavery from the end of the Bronze Age to the present day. An essential read.
"The Peasants" transforms the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Władysław Reymont into an artistically exciting but fundamentally disappointing drama of a young 19th century peasant girl's self-empowerment
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Bildunterschrift
Georg Forster
As criticism of colonialism and bitter debates on cultural appropriation resurface, it is worth looking back to the 18th century and to Georg Forster, one of the most fascinating thinkers of his time