I went to a nice reading tonight featuring some contemporary German-speaking authors at the Goethe Institut, entitled, “Literaturlenz: Reading with Authors from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.” Silke Scheuermann, Ulrike Ulrich, and Cornelia Travnicek each read aloud excerpts of their recent work in German, while an English translation of the text was projected onto a screen behind the authors.

After the readings, I spoke briefly with Ulrike Ulrich about computer technology’s role in human communication in her latest novel fern bleiben, and Franco Moretti’s quantitative methods in the field of literary theory.

I wish I knew German better so that I could have understood their readings, but regardless it was still a great event, even for non-German speakers.