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.

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.

Summer Term

Édouard Louis, born as Eddy Bellegueule in 1992 in the north of Fance, is a literary rising star. In his autobiographical debut "En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule", published in 2014, he describes his childhood of poverty, alcoholism, unemployment and racism and his escape from these precarious conditions. The book, a bestseller in France and translated in over 20 languages, provoked a heated debate over social inequality and the resulting violence.

In 2016, his second autobiographical novel "Histoire de la violence" followed. In it, he describes how a chance encounter on Christmas night 2012 ends in a nightmare. The novel is going to be adapted for the stage by Thomas Ostermeier and the premiere will be June 3rd at the Schaubühne Berlin.

For Louis who studied at the École Normale Supérieure and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris the question of reasons for violence is of central importance: “The world in which we live is deeply affected by violence. And we have to talk about it in order to reduce the violence. The only way to fight violence is to talk about it. The people talking about violence are the biggest bearers of hope for me.”(Interview in the NZZ, 10.12.2017)

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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