Shahrazad - Stories for life

Once again, German and/or Spanish speaking young people from 16 years onwards have the possibility to write, test and discuss their own texts in a workshop organised by Litprom - Society for the promotion of African, Asian and Latin American literature.

A lecture given by Ilya Trojanow

Member of the ICORN Council of Writers and Experts

Every Saturday and Sunday, all over Europe, people from different walks of life come together to support their very own. They flock into the arenas, wearing the shirts of their heroes, eager to scream and shout for the better part of two hours. What do they sing in moments of joy and ecstasy? Which slogan unites them all, whether they are comfortably seated in the stadium of Anderlecht or quivering on their feet in Lüttich? Olé! Rhythmically repeated in a distinct, well-known cascade: olé ... olé olé olé. Probably most fans link this slogan with Spain. Maybe they associate it with toreros or with Don Juan. But how many of the fans that whip themselves into frenzy with unrelenting olés realize that they are actually repeating the Arab word for God. Time and again, every Saturday and Sunday, the soccer stadiums in Europe resonate with shouts of "Allah"!

In times of crisis the rhetoric of conflict blossoms. The ongoing, seemingly endless "War On Terror", powered by deliberately vague justifications, has metastasised into a clash of canons, cultures and civilizations. We are on the edge of disaster, we have to close ranks and defend our values and traditions. The foreign is an antagonistic force that has to be repelled. Thus we are asked, more often heatedly implored, to define our identity, to become aware of our own heritage, to defend our very own values.

But what if we are not defined by a homogenous, home-grown culture, because such a thing does not exist, has never existed? What if our identity is nothing but a snapshot of a dynamic process that we are caught up in, often without noticing? What if what we regard as alien is only the result of a momentary difference, a fleeting gesture of history? What if those that are claiming to defend the core of a certain nation, a certain tradition, a certain religion are fighting windmills while the reality of cultural dynamics is in the wind? For what if the values and cultural achievements of the so-called West were the result of awakenings and rebellions made possible by what we today regard as non-European sources, by movement and migration? What if core Western values, technologies and cultural expressions were decisively formed by confluences, by a intensive exchange between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, by a vibrant culture of debate amongst scholars working in Granada, Baghdad, Palermo, Damascus, Bologna, Paris, Venice and Cairo? What if all that we perceive as canonical and classical is a hybridity that we have forgotten? Or have been persuaded, encouraged, conditioned to forget?

On 25 September, Ilya Troyanov opened the new Passa Porta season with a unique reflection on literature and society.

This week (19-23 October) Norwich City of Refuge will engage students in schools across Norfolk in the story of The Strangers - European refugees who came to Norwich in the 16th century and whose legacy remains in everything. From their influence on the way the English language is spoken here to the nickname of the local football club, The Canaries.

For the visitors to the Frankfurt Book Fair, there will be several opportunities to visit events organized by Shahrazad - stories for life. Among these, on Wednesday October 14, comes "Unpleasant Truths: Dressing up reality - media policy and counter-information". Many attempts are made worldwide to influence the view of events, to manipulate the media, to falsify or suppress news. Iran is just one example. Journalism and foreign cultural policy operate within this conflictive arena - what scope for action do they still have? How can counterbalance be achieved and to what ends? With: Amir Hassan Cheheltan (author, Iran/currently Berlin), Mahmud Doulatabadi (author, Iran), Christiane Hoffmann (FAZ, Frankfurt am Main), Jamsheed Faroughi (Deutsche Welle, Cologne). The event is chaired by Ulrich Grothus (DAAD, Bonn).

In the memoir "In Search of My Homeland," Er Tai Gao chronicles his
years in China from his first imprisonment in a labor camp in 1959, to
his escape from China in 1991. Read an excerpt of this new book here at Stories for Life!

In Search of My Homeland

Lanzhou Number Ten Middle School was located on the north bank of the Yellow River on a foothill called Saltfield-Town-Temple-Dune, well outside the city. Not only was the name grating, the landscape was ugly. The newly built three-story school, resembling a gray matchbox, stood solitary above innumerable low and broken-down adobe houses, which, like rows of fish scales, extended downward to the river, where green orchards lined the banks. Beyond the grounds irrigated by the waterwheels, not a blade of grass grew. From the river's edge, a narrow dirt path twisted up for about ten li to our school. Continuing farther, the houses became fewer and fewer, until there was only the dirt-covered, adobe-colored mountain-barren, without trees, grass or stones-and behind it, more indistinguishable mountains. Looking from the highest peak, thousands upon thousands of mountains formed a greenish yellow expanse, and yet in that hard-featured monotony there was a fierce, untamed ruggedness.