Literatur.Review - The literary magazine for the whole world

Where decisions speak softly

Mary Ellen Matthews / Suhrkamp

"Into the Uncut Grass": Trevor Noah and Sabina Hahn tell why sometimes you just have to start running to get home. A fable about friendship, freedom and the gentle weight of decisions

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On the present state of Moroccan literature

Private

Mohamed Khalfouf

On canon formation, linguistic diversity and literature beyond the centre

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"Hitler was a leftist"

Maximilian Gödecke

Volker Weiß

In "Das Deutsche Demokratische Reich" (The German Democratic Reich), historian Volker Weiß shows how right-wing politics is made possible today by the rewriting and reinterpreting of history

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Against "colonial amnesia"

Sonja Maria Schobinger

Martin R. Dean

In his transcontinental family history "Tabak und Schokolade", Martin R. Dean reconstructs Switzerland's colonial entanglements using a wide variety of memory media

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Bound to be Re-Read?

KAG1LP2MDIAKITE, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Yambo Ouologuem

‚Bound to Violence‘ by Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem was republished as a Penguin Modern Classic, a series of books self-defined as “shaping the reading habits of generations since 1961”

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Not a lyrical medicine cabinet, more like a colourful plate

olyviaoyster

Hannes Wesendonk

Hannes Wesendonk's poems reveal a recurring interplay between banality, seriousness and nonsense

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"Even if you look for a hundred years, you won't find me anymore…"

Wikimedia Commons

Layeq Sherali

Two poems from Tajikistan

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In the world and beyond...

Private

Ghizlan Touati

Prose of silence in repetition

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In "Soul Lanterns", Shaw Kuzki shows how memories are passed down through generations and change over time. Her young adult novel combines historical truth, poetic concision and the quiet rituals of a restless city

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"Finding yourself without losing yourself"

Fartein Rudfjord

Halldór Guðmundsson

Halldór Laxness spent his life searching for literary and political identity. His novels on colonialism, poverty and nature now read like early voices of the Global South. An interview with his biographer Halldór Guðmundsson.

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Literature Needs Space. We Keep It Open.

Axel Timo Purr

Starfield Library, Seoul

Why Literatur.Review needs support now – and why independent literary criticism is not a luxury.

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Only the most populous country in the world?

ORF America

Dhruva Jaishankar

With "Vishwa Shastra - India and the World", Dhruva Jaishankar has written an introduction to Indian history for the youth of his country. It focuses on India's relations with the world and the future of the subcontinent

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African theatre versus Western classics

Private

Hamed Ben Mohamed Mahdawi

Between resistance and creative appropriation: how African artists are transforming the Western theatrical canon to create cultural self-determination and new forms of expression

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Hard land, blind heart

Suhrkamp

Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar's "Adama" is a stark portrait of Israeli history, exploring violence, hope and self-destruction. An unusual thriller that demonstrates how no ideal remains unscathed when people have to live with it.

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The scene of horror and tenderness

Private

Halim Youssef

Halim Youssef's "Liebe im Schatten der dunklen Flaggen" is a poetic masterpiece about surviving in the darkness on the Iraqi-Syrian border

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A future that slips through the fingers

Lane + Co

Abdulrazak Gurnah

In "Theft", Abdulrazak Gurnah traces the fine cracks that run through friendship, love and origins when a society is set in motion. A quiet novel that unfolds its greatest power precisely in its omissions

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Presence of the Absent Man

Private

Alia Mamdouh

A story from Iraq

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Black

Larissa Villacorta

Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso

A poem about the historical burden inscribed on black bodies.

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Domination and resistance

Private

Maja Zwick

Language, power and migration in an unfinished decolonisation – the case of Western Sahara

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Remembering borders

Private

In his new book "Border Documents", Mexican photographer Arturo Soto unfolds a quiet, poetic topography of memory - far from clichés, close to the everyday reality of the border

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Understanding China (and ourselves) better

F. Mantovani

Romain Graziani

In "Les Lois et les Nombres - Essai sur les ressorts de la culture politique chinoise", Romain Graziani explains where the roots of Chinese state thinking lie, what they mean and how they still shape our present day

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The Theatre of Resistance and South Africa's Unfinished Story

Private

Shafā’ath-Ahmad Khān

A dialogue with Mbizo Chirasha and anti-apartheid writer, pro-African poet and activist Shafā’ath-Ahmad Khān on the legacy of protest and the power of writing.