In the AUFLAUF review mail this month: - Karaoke - Fascist afterlives - Very good literature - Pick-me-girls - Books cost 20c a page now??? - Finally the truth about the Limerick Writers Center theauflauf.substack.com/p/may-books-...

Some great reviews this month: @brynstole.bsky.social on Wolfgang Koeppen's post-war trilogy, @return2sanders.bsky.social on Paul Celan's still-mesmerising ephemera, and myself on Polly Barton's novel of expat life and karaoke and translation:

SAVE THE DATE: A panel and reading inspired by WG Sebald, in English, in Berlin, June 6th. How does the past fall upon the present? Who gets mourned and how? Why this constant feeling of vertigo? Feat. Scraton, Kruger, Watts. Submissions NOW OPEN for readers >>> www.lettretage.de/programm/seb...

Two wonderful short pieces by @return2sanders.bsky.social and @marcelkrueger.bsky.social: one about the immanence of early fatherhood, the other about the agonies of facing the past.

Hilda Hoy might just be able to change the way you think about multilingualism, migration and motherhood – I had a wonderful time talking with her about her memoir MOTHER TONGUE, just out from @windandbones.com.

"My god, it took a genocide for people to want to know what's going on." This weekend, Mudar Al-Khufash is staging his lecture-performance Dialectics of Erasure at the Berliner Ringtheater. @return2sanders.bsky.social spoke to him for HEIST www.heistberlin.com/i-am-not-cen...

Lots of cool stuff coming out of Equator, a new mag with an explicitly international outlook that challenges western dominance of culture and society. This is a fascinating piece on how Switzerland harassed the Yenish and Sinti, two Traveler communities, from 1926-1973.

I wrote about the poetry and prose of Antigone Kefala, one of the Great Australian Writers of all time >> sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/alien...

Here it is, My First Fiction Publication. Big 🩷 to the Auflauf gang. You should subscribe!

A wonderful set of reviews: @ajbwells.bsky.social on poems from Palestine's greatest living poet; @return2sanders.bsky.social on unsettling short prose from the Yenish writer; and @biettetimmons.bsky.social on the book we're all supposed to be reading. (Plus our gossip columnist goes lyrical.)

"I like comics because it’s kind of a bastard medium, and I think graphic narrative theater is too. It’s the vision." Ken Krimstein talked to @return2sanders.bsky.social about writing novel about Hannah Arendt – and then seeing it become a play at the Deutsches Theater.

the terms are unacceptable. Tuttle should resign www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

this looks cool

have a taste for literature & gossip? Read The AufLAuf

subscribe to the auflauf! undoubtably berlin's premier gossip-mongering literary review!

the best new books publication the western hemisphere is THE AUFLAUF: theauflauf.substack.com

Another great set of books this month: Matthew McDonald's debut poetry collection @ajbwells.bsky.social; Julia Franck's autobiographical novel @return2sanders.bsky.social; and Agri Ismaïl's account of dislocation and late capitalism @brynstole.bsky.social. Plus some EXPLOSIVE new gossip...

#Berlin "The Sea Is There, But We Are Not" Literature from #Palestine Reading & conversation with Alaa Alqaisi, Asmaa Azaizeh, Maha El Hissy @mahaelhissy.bsky.social & Ahmed Saleh, music by Cham Saloum Heute Abend ab 19:30 Uhr, Eintritt kostenfrei, Eingang rollstuhlgerecht (leider nicht die WCs)

What's one of the great openings to a story, poem, novel or essay?

In the Auflauf's first monthly author interview, @mathildegm.bsky.social dials up @tobiasvryan.bsky.social in his Parisian garret to talk about unrelatable fiction, @minorliteratures.bsky.social, and the Unreal (European) City of his soul ....... theauflauf.substack.com/p/tobias-rya...

interview @ The Auflauf with thanks to @mathildegm.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theaufla...

@tobiasvryan.bsky.social has written a gross, beautiful, challenging book about a horrible man who won't leave you alone – and I got to talk to him about it for The Auflauf:

Check out The Auflauf, a new substack of Berlin books. Our first course: @mathildegm.bsky.social on Reimann, @brynstole.bsky.social on Clark, & me on Maci. @ajbwells.bsky.social is in the kitchen too helping cook and dish up lit crit, goss & conversations: theauflauf.substack.com

Have all the haters just forgotten about freemasonry?

Heute um 14 Uhr !

A few thoughts about the NYT critics shakeup: Theater is one of the hardest of all disciplines to cover as a critic (or reporter). You need to know its language and history. And there's a ton you can and should do to educate yourself. But you can never "catch up." You can't see what you didn't see.>

On Florentina Holzinger’s latest opera, by @return2sanders.bsky.social‬

My debut novel, Poor Ghost! is out today with @sceptrebooks.bsky.social It’s about class, mourning, love, fathers, Manchester, and lots of other stuff. I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

Dass der Zentralrat besorgt ist vom Beschluss der @die-linke.de, die IHRA-Arbeitsdefinition abzulehnen und die Jerusalem Declaration (JDA) anzunehmen, kann man ihm glauben. Aber seine Argumentation gegen die JDA ist so nicht haltbar. Vier Punkte. 1/ x.com/ZentralratJu...

„Dass die IHRA-Definition von Regierungen angenommen wurde, ist weitgehend Ergebnis politischer Kampagnen von Akteuren im Einklang mit der israelischen Regierung. Es gibt ausreichend Belege, dass die IHRA v. illiberalen Kräften instrumentalisiert wird, um Freiheiten & Menschenrechte zu untergraben.“

An interesting layered take on Joe Chialo and the dismantling of funding for progressive arts projects in Berlin, plus whether mockery helps. thediasporist.de/bait-and-swi...

Book launch in Berlin tomorrow >>> www.lettretage.de/Termine/berl...

Now get rid of the AfD policies and attitudes that the CDU/CSU has adopted.

The wonderful people of @almafamily4.bsky.social still need your help!!! Give if you can!!!

FULL LINEUP for our little festival of Australian and Aoteoroa/New Zealand literature in Berlin on May 24th!! Come see professors, poets, artists, & novelists (& me); come hear about Weiss & Bismarck's bastards & Sebald in the desert & multidirectional war memory >> stadtsprachen.de/en/event/par...

www.the-berliner.com/books/vilay-... COME TO CURIOUS FOX TONIGHT TO SEE THIS LOVELY MAN BUT LESS IN MUD @berlinbooks.bsky.social

great column on thomas brasch and berlin's political theater by @return2sanders.bsky.social in last month's Berliner mag >> www.the-berliner.com/stage/thomas...

in this month's Berliner mag, I waded in to the "brodernism" debate—and called time on the genre of anglophone literary criticism that was designed to go viral on Twitter >> www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...

More than 40 years after the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the full scope of the toll AIDS took on the world of theater in New York remains difficult to access.

Was für ein Grauen: Der Berliner Kulturzerstörer Joe Chialo soll lt. tagesschau offenbar Kultur-Staatsminister werden.

🪓 Outrage in the Czech Republic: Axe used to vandalize memorial to Romani children murdered during the Holocaust 📰 Full article: romea.cz/en/czech-rep...

Rest in power, John Fox. Welfare State was a guiding light to a generation of theatre and performance-makers. 🏮

Amen

With the money from the sponsorship, I hear the stabi’s going to have some decent food at last… www.the-berliner.com/english-news...

Harvard is obeying in advance. Absolute cowards. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Viktor Orbán's Hungary: scourge of the EU, role model for the US right. For @thebaffler.com, I wrote about how the Orbán regime seeks legitimacy by telling dodgy stories about the 20th century—stories not all so different from those that we've been telling in the West thebaffler.com/salvos/house...

Viktor Orbán wants to rewrite Hungary’s national myths. In this preview from our new issue (out next week) @ajbwells.bsky.social writes on the many fronts of the Fidesz party’s culture war.

Fidesz wants to "substitute gulag for Auschwitz, to make ideas like redistribution and internationalism just as politically taboo as antisemitism and eugenics" Such a great essay about Hungary's anti-communist memory culture by @ajbwells.bsky.social in @thebaffler.com

Don‘t forget Harvard! Also now using IHRA to pacify the forces that be, intellectual integrity out the window!