This week's crop

From the Feuilletons

Algerian writer Boualem Sansal opposes the regime, the Prophet and
even Allah. Donald Tusk admits to a having a passion for Werner
Herzog. Tariq Ramadan steers round a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faust,
that washed-up entrepreneur from the former Communist Bloc, is
everywhere in Eastern Germany nowadays. The SZ spits vitriol at the
blogs and gay writers are taking on Poland at last.

Books this Season

This literary autumn belongs to two Russian writers: Vassily Grossmann
and Varlam Shalamov, whose epic works have been published in German at
long last. But older Germans and German Romantics, Polish queens,
Romanian Mannerists, combative atheists, Neopolitan Camorristi,
Catalonian knights and a glutton of glorious abandon have also come up
trumps.

Time to go down to the cellar

Since the 19th century Ukrainians have been dreaming of a return to
the paradise lost of Europe. But Ukraine’s rich and painful history
remains a blank spot in the European collective consciousness, or a
mighty underground river flowing out of Europe’s cellar, littered with
corpses. By Oksana Zabuzhko