22.10.2015. An October morning in Melk is a good time for reflection. Under overcast skies the ‘executive suite’ of the Benedictine Abbey rising in its pastel yellow above the town gives a quiet ...

23.10.2015. All over the world (at least I think so) people enjoy talking about the weather. They mainly do so because grumbling about the weather is a constant, and there is no fear of any ...

In the week prior to the Frankfurt Book Fair the reports and rumours were amassing that the ebook market had reached its limits of expansion – at least for published titles. Widely divergent figures ...

As the French writer Patrick Deville occasionally muses his stories are basically “novels without fictions”. Deville is the author of brilliant continental investigations, reportages, historical ...

Two Dutch entrepreneurs in their late twenties who are more comfortable wearing hoodies than formal suits have succeeded in achieving something in Germany where even reputable media organizations ...

“Did you go to the Salon du livre in Paris this year?” This is a question I posed in passing to a number of Arab writers who live in Paris and write in their mother tongue. The answer given by most ...

Anybody who wants to get to know Hungary now – to understand or even to want to understand – should switch off the radio, put down the newspapers and not go online. Instead, he or she should pick up ...

It is right, of course, that many writers and artists are ‘geographically’ in exile. Yet in my view, back ‘home’ they had already gone into inner exile since they became aware of the pain in the ...

On Literature in 2015. It sounds so easy: you pick the most important novels, short stories and poetry editions from a year; you assess and evaluate them, and finally you say what these novels, short ...