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Books this Season: Fiction

The headlines were stolen by Charlotte Roche's moist little sex shocker and Jonathan Littell's sprawling SS fantasies but only two books united the critics: one is good and the other, utterly objectionable. There was a flurry of interest in some fabulous comics and a resurgence of the political and the historical novel. A dip into the books published in Germany this spring.

Magazine Roundup

In Eurozine the 69-year-old Catalan philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventos admits to his growing radicality. In Nepszabadsag the 75-year-old writer Gy�rgy Konrad declares: remembering is rebellion. In Artforum the 84-year-old philosopher Artur C. Danto thinks about art and revolution. In The New Republic Anne Applebaum takes a hammer to Nicholson Baker's pacifist polemic "Human Smoke". In Folio Christian Demand sends out a distress signal for art criticism. And the Spectator portrays the Anglican Church's only openly gay Bishop.

From the Feuilletons

The Olympic games belong to the athletes, not the politicians: this is the argument today, just as it was in 1936, against a boycott of the host country. Slavenka Drakulic explains her dislike of the word "Balkanisation". Elfriede Jelinek writes about the architecture of fear in Armstetten. The SZ asks whether Rem Koolhaas' CCTV tower is an "building of evil" and Jacques Herzog explains how democracy weighs heavily on an architect's dreams.

From abattoir to disco

Travels through the dreams and nightmares of Europe, in a small land of great poets, torn between Balkan catastrophe and Brussels. A reportage on Croatia, this year's partner country at the Leipzig Book Fair. By Gregor Dotzauer

And isn't it baronic

Billed as the inspirational story of one of the greatest legends of all times, "The Red Baron" is flying, driving and healing Germany at dizzy cinematic heights. There are just not enough superlatives to do this film justice. By Ekkehard Kn�rer.

Macedonia � what's in a name?

Dragan Klaic arrived in Skopje on the day that Greece vetoed Macedonia's bid to join NATO at the summit in Bucharest. He found a nation reeling from this unexpected slap in the face.

Bread-winning badante

Diana Ivanova travels to Tuscany to report on an Italian profession attracting Bulgarian women in their thousands, and a unique European trend: the outsourcing of suffering.

Mohammed on the "straight path"

Did the Prophet Mohammed only become a power-conscious religious politician in Medina, where he emigrated from Mecca in 622? Author of a new Mohammed biography, Tilman Nagel has found much to indicate the absence of any genuine break in the evolution of this religious founder.

A twelve-minute film about the Koran

No-one knows what the anti-Koran film 'Fitna' by the Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders contains exactly. But fearing Muslim anger many are ready to make concessions regarding the fundamental freedom of expression. Gelijn Molier looks to nineteenth century philosopher John Stuart Mill for advice.

Evil dead

An SS man reflects on mass murder - and there's a pigeon hole for every vile deed. Novelist Georg Klein on the Holocaust and the enlightened harmony of trivial realism in Jonathan Littell's novel "Les Bienveillantes" which has just been translated into German.

Rationalising the irrational

The 400-page German translation of Jonathan Littell's corpse-littered SS novel,"Les Bienveillantes," has put the German-language feuilletons into a critical frenzy, despite the general consensus that the book is bad. We have compiled a selection of the accusations hurled.

Riot reruns in Belgrade

Dragan Klaic returned to Belgrade to give a theatre seminar. It happened to be on the same day that rioting and protests against Kosovo's independence flared up in a replay of a scenario from the late eighties. An eye witness account of self-destructive Serbian theatrics.

Back to Rudi Dutschke's pram

So what was 1968? It was when the children of German mass murderers ran after mass murderer Mao Tsedong, says historian and ex-Maoist G�tz Aly. Absolutely not, says educationalist and author Katharina Rutschky: The practice of dispelling fascism in the kindergarten was far more important than ideology. Stefan Reinecke and Jan Feddersen preside over a full-blown row.

The mild bunch

Only one truly original auteur filmmaker made it into this year's Berlinale Competition. With "Night and Day" Korean director Hong Sangsoo proved himself to be one of the great free-thinking talents of contemporary cinema. This aside, emaciated wishy-washy realism prevailed. By Ekkehard Kn�rer

Berlinale box

With the Berlin film festival well underway we pick out some of the highlights. Jose Padilha's "Tropa de Elite" might have all the components of an Egoshooter film but it's far off. Hongkong star Johnnie To's "Sparrow" is a bringer of unadulterated joy. Isabel Coixet's "Elegy" stars a couple of aging Roth rabbits. And P.T. Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" should be enjoyed on an empty stomach.

Bordering on miraculous

A frighteningly intense Daniel Day Lewis, musical accompaniment from Martin Scorsese, Madonna and Patti Smith, home-made filmic fumblings from a music video genius, a mere smidgen of German material and plenty of Far Eastern promise. After the Berlinale Film Festival hit rock bottom last year, it seems a sharp upwards turn is on the cards for 2008.

Double life is the drug

Kurt von Hammerstein was head of the Reichswehr, a grand seigneur, and an implacable opponent of National Socialism. In his new book "Hammerstein oder Der Eigensinn" (Hammerstein or idiosycrasy), Hans Magnus Enzensberger engages in dialogues with the dead to deliver a literary and lunatic precipitate of German history.
By Ina Hartwig

Evil and the upright citizen

A large-scale and long-overdue project has begun. German historians are documenting the persecution and extermination of the Jews in 16 volumes of primary source texts where metal merchants and budgie lovers all have their say - with no recourse to hindsight. By Eckhard Fuhr

Julia Fischer: Virtuosissima!!!

At the New Year's concert in the Alte Oper in Frankfurt the audience's excitement was palpable. It was patently clear to all assembled that they were either about to witness the disgrace of one of the world's greatest living violinists, or the triumphant birth of a new piano virtuoso. By Arno Widmann

"I need the Klagenfurt money"

The Ingeborg Bachmann Competition has just ended in Klagenfurt. One of the participants was writer Clemens Meyer, whose debut novel "Als wir tr�umten" was highly acclaimed at the Leipzig Book Fair in March. He spoke with Gerrit Bartels just before the competition about Klagenfurt, his writing and tattoos.

The multicultural issue

Who should the West support: moderate Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, or Islamic dissidents like Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Are the rights of the group higher than those of the individual? With a fiery polemic against Ian Buruma's "Murder in Amsterdam" and Timothy Garton Ash's review of this book in the New York Review of Books, Pascal Bruckner has kindled an international debate. By now Ian Buruma, Timothy Garton Ash, Necla Kelek, Paul Cliteur, Lars Gustafsson, Stuart Sim, Ulrike Ackermann, Adam Krzeminski, Halleh Ghorashi and Bassam Tibi have all stepped into the ring.

Thankmar, the young Krahl

From right wing fraternities to the red dawn of Marxism. In his short life, the charismatic student revolutionary Hans-J�rgen Krahl went from the far right to the far left. A biographical sketch by Gerd Koenen.

The radical loser

The social sciences have failed in their analyses of amok killers, frenzied murderers and the terrorist mind. And yet one look is enough to identify the culprit: the radical loser. By Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Bucharest in a trance

Romanian literature is still a tiny niche in the German book market. Mircea Cartarescu's latest novel to be published here, "Die Wissenden," shows readers what they are missing. A visit to Bucharest to meet the man who is probably Romania's most famous author. By J�rg Plath

Coincidence and illumination

Cologne Cathedral looks back at a long and eventful history. The inauguration of Gerhard Richter's stained glass window for the South Transept adds a new chapter, bright with 72-colour, frame-breaking abstraction. By Petra Kipphoff

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The ideal Yugoslavian

Anyone who counts Danube Swabians, Slovenians and Italians among his forefathers and lives as a Bosnian Croat first in Sarajevo and then in Zagreb, is entitled to call his birth a political project. Miljenko Jergovic tells the story of his family, of people whose identities have more to do with what they are not, than what they are.

Organic or bust

The Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg is the playground of the new Germany. But unless you fit in, life can be tough among the beautiful creatives of a gated community that needs no wall. By Henning Su�ebach

Waking a Polish demon

"Fear" is the punchy title of book about Polish anti-Semitism whose recent publication in Poland has sparked an emotional debate. Very few people have come to the defence of its author, Jan Tomasz Gross, who has taken on the difficult task of making uncomfortable facts known to a wider audience and removing blind spots in Polish history. By Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz