Table of Contents
A Personal Note
1. Don't Follow the Poets!
The Quran and Poetry
2. Revolt against God
Attar and Suffering
3. World without God
Shakespeare and Man
4. Heroic Weakness
Lessing and Terror
5. God Breathing
Goethe and Religion
6. Filth of My Soul
Kleist and Love
7. The Truth of Theatre
The Shiite Passion Play and Alienation
8. Liberate Bayreuth!
Wagner and Empathy
9. Swimming in the Afternoon
Kafka and Germany
10. The Purpose of Literature
Hedayat and Kafka
11. For Europe
Zweig and the Borders
12. In Defence of the Glass Bead Game
Hesse and Decadence
13. The Violence of Compassion
Arendt and Revolution
14. Tilting at Windmills
Mosebach and the Novel
15. One God, One Wife, One Cheese
Golshiri and Friendship
16. Chant the Quran Singingly
Neuwirth and Literalist Orthodoxy
Appendix
On the 65th Anniversary of the Promulgation of the German Constitution
Speech to the Bundestag, Berlin, May 23, 2014
On Receiving the Peace Prize of the German Publishers' Association
Speech in St Paul's Church, Frankfurt am Main, October 18, 2015
About the Text
Index