Inspiration

It started with my brothers. There were certain things that were always clear to me: I was different because I was not my brothers. I was different because I was not a boy. I was different because I was a girl.

We don’t see things the way they are – we see them the way we are, says the Talmud, one of Judaism’s most important texts. But which way is that? Which stories are told about Germany and its people, and who is missing from them?

September is #WorldKidLitMonth, celebrating literature from around the world for young people, particularly in translation. To join in these celebrations, Claire Storey spoke to Bianca Kuchenbrod from German children’s publisher Arena Verlag.

Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, has arranged to meet with the seventh-generation publisher Jonathan Beck.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, some people believed we had reached the end of history. But hope of a peace dividend was to prove vain.

A Column by Katerina Poladjan
Much has already been said about Germany, and much of it certainly needed to be said. But who or what is Germany?

Identity politics divides us, creates artificial groups in society and reinforces discrimination instead of combating it. Isn’t it the opposite of what social justice movements should be doing? Wouldn’t it be more effective to bring us together instead of highlighting our differences? Aren’t we all human? And most importantly, do we want to be put in boxes – aren’t we all more complex than these fixed identity dimensions?

What is ‘identity politics’? Anyone who knows the answer is probably against the idea. In recent months, the term has had an illustrious career – but only as a caricature and a distortion.

Until not so very long ago, the term ‘identity’ was the preserve of right-wing movements, which interpreted it in a nationalistic and chauvinistic way. Today, it is increasingly being used on the left as a way of emancipating groups who experience discrimination. This, however, raises the question of whether the conscious recognition of identity can ever have a positive effect, especially from a progressive point of view.

Every year in October, the world comes to Frankfurt. People from across the globe gather together here because they have one thing in common: their love of culture and of words, whether in written, printed or (increasingly) electronic form.

A child’s everyday life is full of feelings, crying, laughing, being together, being apart, having fun and sleeping. To a child, everything is important and experienced with great intensity. At the same time, the world is big and exciting. Who are we humans in this world? And anyway, what is the world compared to the cosmos? Books can help to make sense of all this.

The German comics scene doesn’t have a particularly big share of the domestic book market, but it’s evolving and making its mark – with some interesting thematic trends.