Attending a literary reading in Ger...

Attending a literary reading in Germany today is like going to a protection concert. Not only are tickets ofttimes sold, but they're often sold out; and in the bookstores, Literaturhauser, filled with smoke pubs, and convention halls, forward television, radio, and the pages of newspapers, writers and literature itself are one time again subject to a phenomenal celebrity.

in what way much different matters were solely a decade ago. While the fatherland had, to be sure, more pressing things upon its mind--walls coming down, socio-economic drifts of reunification, the reevaluation of East German society and history, a