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Freund, Wieland
2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Harry Potter's mark
Wieland Freund examines the interaction between new and old media and marvels at the power of the Harry Potter books. "Although it owes part of its great success to a media alliance (as opposed to rivalry between media), 'Harry Potter' remains a book. This is the real miracle. So taking its success seriously means first of all reflecting on our place in history. Have we really lived through the television era to witness now the dawn of the Internet era? Or are the steps we're making in fact much smaller, the historical leaps we both fear and desire much less defined than one would have us believe? The decision about the 'Iconic Turn', the image's bid for absolute power, has yet to be made. 'Harry Potter' is a child of the Gutenberg era."
» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » Germany, » United Kingdom
Ilija Trojanow on the "collector of worlds"
Writer Ilija Trojanow, who was born in Bulgaria and grew up in Germany and Kenya, has won the Leipzig Book Prize for his novel "Der Weltensammler" (The collector of worlds) about the British diplomat and explorer Richard Francis Burton. In an interview with Wieland Freund he talks about the Western European view of the world: "The title 'collector of worlds' has a double meaning. The novel deals on the one hand with the Western world's struggle to remain open to other cultures, and on the other with the West's bad habit of trying to impose its ways on the rest of the world. On the one hand, collecting is the need to categorise things, lock them up and put them on display in a show case. On the other hand, it describes an immense curiosity which is stronger in Western Europeans than in other peoples and which leads them not only to explore and conquer the world, but also to open their minds to the unknown. Richard Francis Burton is not the only one. Thousands of people in the history of Western Europe have followed a similarly radical path."
» more information (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » Europe
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