From the Feuilletons   From the Feuilletons  Die Welt 23.10.2010
Ian McEwan was in Berlin to present his latest novel "Solar". In
conversation with Wieland Freund and Jacques Schuster, McEwan,
who shot to fame in Germany with his Cold War novel "Innocent",
explains his great surprise that almost no German author of note
has written about the Wall: "If the Wall had run through
Manhattan, American writers would hardly have avoided the issue.
So why all this silence on the Western side? I believe there are
two answers to this question. One is that most German writers
were politically left-leaning and had they written about the
Wall they would have had to have been against it. But in the
divided world of the Cold War, writers did not want to side with
the CIA. The other, more aesthetically interesting answer, came
from a fellow German writer who, when I asked him why he didn't
write about the Wall said: the Wall is for journalists."  Neue
Zürcher Zeitung 25.10.2010  For Jürgen Ritte, Michel
Houllebecq's bestsell