Kemper, D., Zajas, P. and Bakshi, N., eds. (2019). Kulturtransfer und Verlagsbeit. ‘Suhrkamp’ und Osteuropa. Padeborn: Fink Wilchelm Verlag. (In German).

Abstract

A review of the monograph dedicated to the efforts of the West German publisher Suhrkamp to popularise works of M. Kundera, B. Grabal (Czechoslovakia), W. Szymborska, C. Milosz (Poland), J. Becker (DDR) and many other Eastern European authors in German-speaking markets before the subsequent ‘velvet revolutions' in the Socialist bloc. Co-authored by Dirk Kemper, professor of the University of Freiburg and Moscow's Russian State University for the Humanities, and Pawel Zajac, his colleague from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, the monograph is an international project. The publisher placed special emphasis on Polish literature. However, the book fails to expand on the fact that for many years Suhrkamp ignored Soviet authors, thus significantly narrowing the scope of its cultural transfer. Nonetheless, the authors of the monograph conclude that such a transfer into Eastern Europe was successful.