Tag Archives: German literature

More German Book Award Reactions and German SF

Denis Scheck, probably Germany’s most outspoken and snarkiest literary critic now Marcel Reich-Ranicki has left us, is even less happy about the German Book Prize than me. At any rate, he called awarding the Prize to Terézia Mora an “incredibly … Continue reading

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The German Book Prize does it again and other literary news from Germany

The German Book Prize 2013 has been awarded to Hungarian-German writer Terészia Mora for her novel Das Ungeheuer (The Monster). Spiegel Online, Tagesspiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung have more. Finally, here is a video interview with Ms. Mora about her … Continue reading

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Promo and plugs and my cousin goes indie

Because October is the month of Halloween, Julie from Bards and Sages Publishing has set up a cross publisher bundle of horror and dark fantasy fiction over at DriveThruFiction. The bundle includes Letters from the Dark Side as well as … Continue reading

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In Memoriam Marcel Reich-Ranicki

One of my personal literary heroes, Polish-German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, died today aged 93. Here is a wonderful tribute from Kulturzeit with plenty of Reich-Ranicki clips and here are two more obituaries from the New York Times and the … Continue reading

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Classic German Cinema Rewatch: The Spessart Inn (1958)

The German cinema of the 1950s and early 1960s is usually dismissed as escapist crap. This assessment is grossly unfair (I go a bit more into the reasons here) and causes a lot of the wonderful films to be dismissed … Continue reading

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Just Strangle the Damned Cat! – The Problem of Formulaic Storytelling

Yesterday I blogged about how I don’t much care for what is currently considered “quality drama” in the US and that I find many of the regular, non-prestigious TV dramas, cop shows, police procedurals and the like, inferior to similar … Continue reading

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Some Remarks on the 2013 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize

First of all, the good news. The Ingeborg Bachmann prize is safe (Warning: Really creepy commentary by Jörg Haider supporters at that link). Though some still worry about the role of cultural programming in Austrian public TV in general. What … Continue reading

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No place for literature on TV – Ingeborg Bachmann Prize under threat

I’ve blogged before about the Ingeborg Bachmann prize for German language literature and how fascinating I find the live readings of the competing texts as well as the jury commentary. Now the only reason that I can follow along with … Continue reading

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“Thanks, but I’m not flooded” and other links

In case anybody is worried whether I have been affected by the record breaking floods currently affecting Germany and much of central Europe (The Atlantic has a photo gallery here), I’m far from any potential flooding and safe, though some … Continue reading

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Women in Speculative Fiction, News on the Grimdark Debate and the Unsung Heroes of German Literature

Strange Horizons is once again fighting the good fight and has broken down book reviews in major SFF venues by gender of the author and reviewer. The results are still largely discouraging. At Salon, Alex Heimbach also reports on the … Continue reading

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