Books and Music
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Germany: ‘Eternity for Preußler’
21 February 201316PresseuropSüddeutsche Zeitung -
Germany: Boomtime for Hitler
1 February 201338869 Le Temps Geneva -
Romania: Local literature on its last legs
24 January 20131817 România libera Bucharest -
Croatia: Ivo Josipović: in tune with the times
20 December 2012131 Le Monde Paris -
Germany: Literary offensive against the “Merkel System”
24 August 201210618PresseuropDer Spiegel -
Russia: Pussy Riot debacle echoes old school communism
21 August 201214912 Respekt Prague -
Music: Radiohead against the Commission
12 July 2012852PresseuropThe Daily Telegraph -
Eurovision: Rambo Amadeus, the cliché slayer
18 May 2012951 Tportal Zagreb -
Greece: Life as murky as a thriller novel
16 May 20122995 The Guardian London -
Literature: 2011 - the year of the translator
28 December 20114564 The Observer London -
History: Sixty-Eight Publishers - books of dissent
27 December 2011153 Lidové noviny Prague -
Music: Eurozone crisis too red hot for Metallica
8 December 2011334PresseuropThe Wall Street Journal Europe -
Literature: Brussels subsidises cut-price Kafka
4 November 201188PresseuropFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung -
Television: Romanians suspect Eurovision for oil fix
16 May 2011742PresseuropAdevărul -
Television: Eurovision – tomorrow's Europe
13 May 20112278 The Wall Street Journal Europe Brussels -
Litterature: Paolo Rumiz, soul without frontiers
22 April 20111491 Le Figaro Paris -
Debate: Leviathan is here, in Brussels
25 March 20117606 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Frankfurt -
Spain: King of flamenco dies
14 December 2010PresseuropABC -
Literature: Has America discovered Europe?
10 December 2010104 The New York Times New York -
European of the week: How I survived the Irish boom
24 November 20104661 The Times London -
Literature: Houellebecq king of French letters
9 November 2010PresseuropLibération -
Sweden: Millenium's distorting mirror
6 July 2010841 Fokus Stockholm -
Portugal: Saramago remembered, but President forgets
21 June 2010PresseuropPúblico -
Denmark: Artistic asylum for Zimbabwean writer
16 June 2010PresseuropJyllands-Posten -
Literature: Enter the Euronovel
4 June 2010572 El País Madrid -
Music: Eurovision, better than an EU directive
28 May 2010752 Irish Independent Dublin -
Culture: Europe’s mainstream is just a trickle
23 April 20101274 Rue89 Paris -
France: Paris book fair’s identity crisis
25 March 2010PresseuropLibération -
Literature: Hoax Shakespeare is for real, says expert
16 March 2010PresseuropThe Daily Telegraph -
European of the week: Florence Aubenas, undercover on the crisis
26 February 2010102 Le Monde Paris -
European of the Week: Helene Hegemann, the art of cut and paste
11 February 20101654 Berliner Zeitung Berlin -
Literature: Max Havelaar, more than fair trade
30 December 2009321 Trouw Amsterdam -
Catholic Church: Vatican says Marx is good dope
22 October 200916PresseuropThe Times -
Literature: Saramago toughs it out with God squad
22 October 2009PresseuropDiário de Notícias -
Czech Republic: Kundera spy row reignites
21 October 2009PresseuropLidové noviny -
Literature: Nobel prize for dissidence
9 October 200926 Presseurop -
Rehabilitation: St Peter shortly to admit Oscar Wilde...
17 July 2009PresseuropThe Times -
Music: Madonna non grata in Warsaw
15 July 2009PresseuropHandelsblatt -
Obituary: All doors open now for Dutch poet
13 July 2009PresseuropDe Volkskrant -
Cultural diversity: Fake Oddity's Bosphorus bop
3 July 200915 Cafebabel.com Paris -
Publishing: Library books for keeps
23 June 20091PresseuropABC -
Culture: Something that rhymes with Lisbon...
16 June 2009372 Evenimentul zilei Bucharest -
Netherlands: Anne Frank diaries returned
12 June 2009PresseuropTrouw -
Language: Ost in translation
5 June 2009464 Libération Paris -
Music: Czechs mourn "bad boy" of pop
1 June 2009PresseuropMladá Fronta DNES
Released in the autumn of 2012, ahead of the 80th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's coming to power, "Er ist wieder da" ("He's Back") by German writer Timur Vermes starts off with the dictator’s return to Berlin in the summer of 2011. The book has soared to the top of the book sales charts, but it has also set some teeth on edge. 
We have freedom of movement, freedom of information and freedom of speech, but we are prisoners of a disdain for our language and culture, which is feeding illiteracy, complains a Romanian historian and writer. 
The new year will be busy for Ivo Josipović, the President of Croatia. For one, his country will join the European Union on July 1, 2013. That means this atypical head of state, who is both a lawyer and a composer, will have to wait a while longer before returning to his piano to finish an opera about John Lennon. 
The trial of three members of the punk feminist band sentenced to two years in labour camp on August 17, is reminiscent of the treatment of the rock band Plastic People of the Universe of Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. It demonstrates the same intolerance towards "sowers of disorder" and other critics of the regime. 
The joyfully subversive turbo-funk singer will represent Montenegro at this year’s Eurovision with “Euro neuro” — a humorous and highly accurate enumeration of clichés about the Balkans and their relationship with the EU. 
A novel about a serial-killer in Athens is so realistic that its author, Petros Markaris, had to warn readers that it should not be imitated. The reason : it’s about the tax-dodging Greek elite and the victims of the corrupted system. 
With the worldwide success of Stieg Larsson and Haruki Murakami, translation has not enjoyed such a boom for over a generation. But will it ever attain to that Holy Grail, of perfect fidelity to the original? 
They published Václav Havel and all those Czechoslovak writers banned by the communist regime. Forty years ago, Zdena and Josef Škvorecký created in Toronto one of the most important publishing houses of the Eastern European resistance. 
Often considered too low-brow, the Eurovision song contest, which unfurls this Saturday 14 May, is increasingly appreciated by European academy, who glean in its antics the emergence of a "New Europe". 
Traveller, writer and journalist. Italian, Balkan and a little bit Slavic too. Paolo Rumiz is all these things at the same time, this man who has passed through the upheavals of Europe and got it all down in books of highly personal tales. 
Brussels is the lair of a bureaucratic monster, writes the German essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It’s up to the Europeans themselves now to take up their pitchforks. 
With the help of independent publishing houses and with the input from the Old World’s cultural institutes and agencies, European literature is finally making inroads in the United States, a country which traditionally shies away from books in translation. 
Irish author Julian Gough got through the Celtic Tiger years on little more than love and fresh air. Now resident in Berlin, here’s his tale of staying sceptical (and broke) as the rest of the country went mad (and bust) on property fever. 
Does Sweden's celebrated social-democratic model still exist or has the Millenium saga, which depicts a society sunk in corruption and violence, killed it off? Stieg Larsson's English biographer puts the question to two other masters of the new wave in Northern noir. 
Is it possible to write a novel combining the literary atmospheres of several European nations? That is what the young and gifted Argentine Patricio Pron does in El comienzo de la primavera, according to his Spanish counterpart Félix de Azúa.
The Eurovision Song Contest is not just a festival of tackiness, cheese and camp, argues Irish author Martina Devlin. It’s also a chance to have a look at the countries with whom we now have inextricable links. 
Having lagged behind an American cultural superpower for decades, the European mainstream now faces competition from the cultural products of China, India, and Brazil. A book published in France warns that Europe has been increasingly marginalized in the soft war to capture the popular imagination. 
Journalist and former hostage in Iraq, Florence Aubenas spent six months immersed in the world of precarious employment. She wrote about her experiences in a book which reveals a little known aspect of the reality of life in Europe.
She’s the new star of the German literary scene. At 17, Helene Hegemann has already beguiled the critics with a novel about disoriented and unrestrained youth. The only problem is she lifted whole passages off the web. But she admits it – and ushers in a new take on plagiarism and “authenticity”, writes the Berliner Zeitung. 
Published in 1859, the book that gave its name to the fair trade movement remains a classic work of fiction. Notwithstanding, or perhaps, because of its avant-garde style and continued attempts to wrong-foot the reader, Max Havelaar's portrayal of colonial oppression in Indonesia still has lessons for modern readers. 
On 8 October, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Herta Müller, a Romanian born German writer whose novels focus on the dark days of modern European history. The press in Germany and Romania welcomes the recognition of a writer who has done much to elucidate contemporary conflicts. 
The Lyon-based group talk about taking part in France’s Turkish Season of Culture, beginning July 2009 and the virtues of mixing things up culturally. 
While Europe’s leaders are having trouble selling an EU constitution to an increasingly wary population, an artists’ collective has decided to rewrite the document in sometimes surreal verse, writes Traian Danciu. 
In "Translate" his latest essay, Belgian philosopher and jurist François Ost, sings the praises of multilingualism, the one alternative to the hegemony of global English.