Panelists included Dr Hans-Ulrich Treichel from the German Literature Institute, Leipzig, Prof A R Venkatachalapathy from the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Dr Vanamala Vishwanatha and Arul Mani from the English Department of St Joseph's College. The lively discussion that basically focused on the change and evolution of different styles and profiles of modern day writers from 1982 to the present day covered emerging trends in literature both in urban centres and small semi-rural towns and villages.
Hans-Ulrich Treichel is one of Germany’s best-known modern day writers, having achieved literary success for his work which is described as ‘readable, humourous and yet challenging’.
“The great expectation that digital and Internet literature would drastically change literary aesthetic and narrative language, has not been realised. The two happily co-exist and a process of normalisation has since set in. The scope of blogs today have also increased considerably reaching out to people across cyberspace although in many ways, a blog is nothing but an Internet diary,” he said.
Vanamala Vishwanatha spoke about contemporary writing in Kannada and how it has shifted from limiting itself to the educated Brahmin community to women, Dalits and people living in smaller towns. Arul Mani talked about contemporary Indian writers in English and Venkatachalapthy spoke about Muslim writers, women writers and the impact of the Mandal Commission report on present day writing. He also referred to the IT community taking to blogging in a big way and the rapidly changing profile of writers who are becoming younger and very tech-savvy.
In conclusion, Treichel drew the gatherings attention to many contemporary German authors worth reading and specially recommended Juli Zeh and Sasa Stanisic, whose works have also been translated into English.
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