Goethe-Institut New York | Current Writing Blog

Josef Haslinger in Conversation with Michael Orthofer
11/24/09
6:30pm
Austrian Cultural Forum New York
11 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022
+ 1 (212) 319-5300
desk@acfny.org

Austrian author Josef Haslinger will read from the English translation of his latest book, Phi Phi Island (S. Fischer, 2007), in which he chronicles his experiences in Thailand during the 2004 Tsunami. The reading will be followed by a conversation with Michael Orthofer.

Author Josef Haslinger is professor for literary aesthetics at the Deutsches Literaturinstitut in Leipzig. His best-selling novel Opernball brought him considerable acclaim in 1995.

Michael Orthofer was born in Austria in 1964 and lives in New York. He is the founder and managing editor of the Complete Review and its Literary Saloon weblog, a popular literary web site with a focus on international fiction.

Fifty Years of Die Blechtrommel: Its Importance Then and Now
Symposium/Film Screening
11/13/09
2-6:30 pm
UCLA Royce Hall 314
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095
+1 (310) 825-3955
Free

With this symposium, the UCLA German Department celebrates the 50th anniversary of Günter Grass' novel The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), one of the most important pieces of post-WWII German literature, for which Grass won the 1999 Nobel Prize. Volker Schlöndorff's 1979 film based on the novel won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Here is the schedule for the afternoon's festivities:

2:00 Welcome

2:15 Lecture: Monika Shafi - "Forever Young? The Tin Drum Turns 50"

Monika Shafi is a professor of German at the University of Delaware. Her most recent book is Approaches to Teaching Grass's "The Tin Drum" (MLA, 2007).

3:15 Lecture: Breon Mitchell - "Oskar Gets a New Tin Drum: Retranslating Günter Grass"

Breon Mitchell is professor of German at Indiana University and a translator. His most recent translation is the new English edition of Grass' The Tin Drum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).

4:30 Film Screening: Die Blechtrommel by Volker Schlöndorff

The symposium is co-sponsored by the Center for European and Eurasian Studies (CEES) and by the Goethe-Institute Los Angeles.