Navid Kermani

Helga Druxes is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Williams College. Her books include Resisting Bodies: The Negotiation of Female Agency in Twentieth- Century Women Writers (1996), The Feminization of Dr. Faustus: Female Identity Quests from Stendhal to Morgner (1993) and, with Patricia Simpson, Far Right Digital Media Strategies Across Europe and North America (2015).
Karolin Machtans is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Connecticut College. She is the author of Zwischen Wissenschaft und autobiographischem Projekt: Saul Friedländer und Ruth Klüger (2009) and co-editor, with Martin Ruehl, of Hitler - Films from Germany: History, Cinema, and Politics since 1945 (2012).
Alexandar Mihailovic is Professor Emeritus of Russian and Comparative Literature at Hofstra University and a Visiting Professor of Literature at Bennington College. He is the author of Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin's Theology of Discourse (1997) and the edited volume Tchaikovsky and His Contemporaries (1999). He has published on on religious studies, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian and Ukrainian literature, cultural relations during the Cold War, and LGBTQ and gender.

Navid Kermani - author, journalist and academic - is one of the most prominent public intellectuals in Germany today. Kermani has been at the forefront of recent debates about Islam and its role in Germany's political, social and cultural life. Instead of emphasizing the differences between ethnic affiliations and religious beliefs, Kermani questions the Western notion of a clear dividing line between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, highlighting instead their affinities. In addition to his political essays, Kermani's travel journalism introduces western audiences to diverse Muslim societies in the world and his fiction provides accessible meditations on first love, contemporary music, death and friendship. This is the first volume of criticism in English dedicated to Kermani's varied work. The book features an extensive interview with the author, a reproduction in German and English of Kermani's famous 2014 Bundestag speech and a collection of critical essays on Kermani's writing. The essays, by major scholars in the field, cover issues such as gender, religion, cosmopolitanism, mystical experiences, and the power of the liberal arts in a time of neoliberal distraction.

Navid Kermani - author, journalist and academic - has been at the forefront of recent debates about Islam and its role in Germany's political, social and cultural life. This is the first volume of criticism in English dedicated to Kermani's varied work, including an original interview with the author and a collection of essays on his writing.

Contents: Navid Kermani: Biographical/Bibliographical Chronology - Helga Druxes/Karolin Machtans: Introduction: The Intercultural Project of Navid Kermani - Navid Kermani: «Was zählt, ist das gesprochene Wort» [What Counts is the Spoken Word], Bundestagsrede Celebrating the 65th Anniversary of the Basic Law, 23 May 2014, Berlin - Helga Druxes/Karolin Machtans: Interview with Navid Kermani - David N. Coury: Kafka and the Quran: Patriotism, Culture, and Post-national Identity - Klaus von Stosch: Kermani's Writing on Islamic Religion - Karolin Machtans: The Beauty and Terror of Love: Große Liebe and Du sollst - Jens Hobus: Down by the River: Music, Love, and Memory in Navid Kermani's Work - Torsten Hoffmann: Literary Cemeteries: Recalling the Dead in Kurzmitteilung and Dein Name - Esther Schießer: Kermani's Reception of Jean Paul: Reconsidering his Frankfurt Lectures Über den Zufall and his Novel Dein Name - Helga Druxes: The Crisis of (Re)Productivity in Dein Name - Elke Segelcke: The Political Anthropology of Navid Kermani's Travelogues.