Samuel Fischer Guest Professorship for Literature

The Samuel Fischer Guest Professorship for Literature was instituted at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1998 by the publishers S. Fischer in association with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Freie Universität Berlin and the Veranstaltungsforum of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. In addition to teaching at Freie Universität, the author holds a special Guest Professorship Lecture in Berlin and reads in further cities at various literary events. 

Literatures of the World

The guest professorship is intended to promote the dissemination and critical analysis of world literature. It gives students at Freie Universität Berlin the chance to create literature with internationally renowned authors. The results of this collobaration have been documented and published in Edition AVL.

Summer Term

This summer semester, the Canadian writer couple Madeleine Thien and Rawi Hage are jointly teaching at Freie Universität.
Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver. Her diverse oeuvre includes three novels, a volume of short stories, a children's book, and numerous essays. Central to her writing is the question of how one can retell one's own and shared history against the background of migration, trauma, and the search for identity and belonging. Her work has been translated into more than 25 languages and has won Canada's most prestigious literary prizes and numerous other awards. Thien has taught literature and creative writing in Canada, China, Germany, Nigeria, USA, Zimbabwe, Singapore and Japan.
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut and grew up in Lebanon and Cyprus. His work includes three novels and a variety of literary, artistic and journalistic forms that deal with issues of homelessness, exile and the consequences of war. His debut novel De Niro's Game from 2006 about the war-torn Beirut of the 80s won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
In their seminar „Insinuation and Double Exposure: Appropriation as Literary Response“ the two of them deal with literature against the background of a new questioning of history and the retelling of their own existence.

Winter Term

In the winter term 2018/19 Louis-Philippe Dalembert is S. Fischer guest professor. Louis-Philippe Dalembert has won numerous prices for his comprehensive literary work. Among them he received the Prix RFO du livre for his novel »L’Autre Face de la mer« in 1999 (The Other Side of the Sea, University of Virginia Press, 2014) and the renowned Casa de las Américas Prize for his novel »Les dieux voyagent la nuit« in 2008.

The poet and novelist Louis-Philippe Dalembert was born in 1962. He belongs to the most important contemporary authors of the Caribbean. Dalembert studied journalism and comparative literature in Port-au-Prince and later in Paris, where he graduated in 1996 on the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier. At the age of 20 Dalembert published his first volume of poems which was followed by his first prose text in 1993. Soon after, his first novel »Le crayon du bon Dieu n‘a pas de gomme« was published, which is influenced autobiographically. Also it already comprises themes of farewell, exile and homecoming, to which Dalembert, who describes himself as a “vagabond”, is always recurring.

Samuel Fischer Honorary Lectures

Together with the guest professorship a series of S. Fischer guest of honour-lectures was established beginning with Antonio Skármeta from Chile and Carlos Fuentes from Mexico. In May 2007 Orhan Pamuk, Nobel-Prize Winner of Literatur 2007, read from his Book Istanbul. To mark the 10th anniversary of the guest professorship, Paul Auster read in September 2008 at the Berliner Ensemble and the Nobel-Prize Winner Kenzaburo Oe on 1 November 2008 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt as guests of honour. For the 15th anniversary the first guest professor from 1998, Vladimir Sorokin, read in June 2013 at the Berliner Ensemble from his book The Blizzard.

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