»Berlin Review«: »Our focus remains criticism«

Let’s start banally, fundamentally, fundamentally: What prompted you to found the “Berlin Review”? Why is this online magazine needed today, here and now?

There is a short and a long answer to this. Hopefully a little bit of this long story will come through in our conversation here. The short answer: In Germany there is a traditional feature culture, large-scale radio criticism, a lively climate of discussion through festivals, literary houses and online activities. But there is no place that concentrates all these energies. And above all, there is too little space for contributions that not only evaluate individual stocks, but also put them in context with everything that is going on in the country and, above all, out there, beyond the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, as a critic it is impossible to live on what the newspapers pay. With the “Berlin Review” we want to create a medium that responds to these two gaps.

You now live in Brazil and your co-editor Tobias Haberkorn in Rome. What is “Berlin” about the “Berlin Review”?

Tobias and I currently live in Rome and Fortaleza, respectively, because our partners had interesting job offers there. Before that we were in Berlin for a long time, and of course we are now regularly there and close to the scenes. For me, however, that means no more than twice a year, because it would be absurd if the co-editor of a magazine that might soon produce a anything but devastating longread about the last generation got on a plane across the Atlantic every three weeks. Tobias takes the train over the Brenner a little more often.

Interview

Samir Sellami is a literary scholar, literary critic and, together with Tobias Haberkorn, founding editor of “Berlin Review”. His texts appeared, among other things, in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and the “Merkur”. Sellami’s study “Hyperbolic Realims” on the maximalist late work of Thomas Pynchon and Roberto Bolaño was published by Bloomsbury in New York in February 2024. He also worked in social education projects.

To stay with the “review”: Your reviews are longer texts, bordering on short essays, not ordinary reviews à la synopsis plus judgment. What defines this form for you? It is not particularly common in Germany.

Popular literary criticism carefully shows what books are about and how they are written. But she often lacks patience and hunger for larger contexts, and often also playfulness and risk. We want everything: read the books carefully and tap into their contexts and Texts with aesthetic value of their own that sometimes dare to do something. And for that you need at least 12,000, more likely 20,000 characters.

Do you have something against short texts?

No, that shouldn’t mean that, on the contrary! We are currently developing a format for short reviews – also a category that is not particularly cultivated in Germany. As with everything else in life, I stick to a sentence by C. L. R. James: “The truth is rarely in the middle.”

The name of the magazine is reminiscent of English-language periodicals such as “New York Review of Books” or “London Review of Books”. Now it’s not just about books for you. Where would you place yourself in the broad field of literary and cultural magazines?

Of course, the two of them are our direct role models, although there are now also many younger, good magazines at the highest level, and not just in the Anglo world. Here in Brazil, for example, there is the great magazine “Piaui,” whose longreads and reports are sometimes even better than those in the “New Yorker.” But of course our production conditions are not comparable: we want to be less dignified, less elitist, but with the same intellectual and stylistic standards. To answer the question from before a little more seriously: Although we are bilingual, we don’t want to be an interchangeable magazine in an international style, but we also want to focus on domestic German issues and of course the book market here.

It’s not just Germans who are affected by domestic German issues, especially here in Berlin. This certainly plays a role for you too.

Berlin has long been no longer a place of transit, but is home to very different cultural communities: from Kurdish and Yazidi intellectuals to the Afghan, Iranian, Israeli or Syrian diaspora to artists and scholars at risk from Eastern Europe and the Global South to all the expats with the privileged passes. This creates opportunity but also tension. I see us as a kind of multisensory sponge that absorbs all these energies and transforms them into texts that don’t just recite one discursive position. The new climate of hostility against dissidents of the state has led to our text category “memos” suddenly becoming much more central than planned. But our focus remains criticism: we read the most interesting books and think about them the best.

Let’s go into the magazine: One focus of the first issue is the Middle East conflict. In it, the Palestinian author Adania Shibli reflects on the cancellation of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s Literature Prize – after the massacres on October 7th, they no longer wanted to hold a ceremony for her. How did you come across this text?

We asked and, it seems, were able to gain the trust of a very talented, sensitive author who at that point actually no longer wanted to work with any German media. What was then in the foreground was meticulous work on this wonderfully quiet and yet aggressive text and not the calculation of triggering any spectacular reaction with it.

In another article, the Israeli philosopher Elad Lapidot thinks about the “yellow time”. What does this term mean?

The term comes from David Grossman, who used it to describe the indifference of the Jewish Israeli public in the face of the occupation policies in the West Bank and Gaza. Since the 80s, Grossman has been asking uncomfortable questions about a shared future. With the end of this yellow time, a dark turning point is coming for Elad, something that promises to be even darker than the era of indifference. It was a great, oppressive blessing to be able to publish this sad text.

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There is an essay on the history of Palestinian migration to Germany; one text deals with the German identity crisis after the massacres of Israelis on October 7th. What was important to you when approaching this topic? Balance? A clear political direction?

“A clear political direction” in this respect, because that would mean that we already knew in advance what would come out later. But it was important to us to offer a counterweight to the desolate publication situation after October 7th. The term censorship does not adequately describe this situation, because many of those in charge in the German cultural media simply seem to have no idea what is at stake with the actions of the partly fascist Netanyahu government and what is being talked about France, for example in “Le Monde diplomatique”, the online newspaper “Médiapart” or the discourse blog “AOC Media”, openly discussed every day. Because if they knew about it without revealing it, they would have to be accused of cynicism instead of ignorance, and nobody really wants that.

You and Tobias Haberkorn are both literary scholars. This brings me to the question of topicality: What is the advantage of uploading texts at regular intervals, i.e. issue by issue, instead of constantly filling a platform?

Good question, because we don’t do themed magazines, so you could just put out a new post every two days in a blog style, couldn’t you? But that would deprive ourselves of valuable opportunities. Because while we diligently collect the individual texts, we want to compose an overall structure for each issue and create a resonance space that also arises between the texts. And we then pass the whole thing on to our readers on the day of publication as a lovingly wrapped package. We are already loosening up the spending rhythm and will expand this, for example through our print editions, a newsletter just for subscribers or regular podcasts. There are lots of ideas, we just need a little time and, above all, enough subscribers…

In a funny review, sociologist Carolin Amlinger looks at reading habits and prejudices regarding the young adult romance novel genre, which is very successful among young people: How do you imagine your readers? Who subscribes to you (so far)? Do you want to bind a permanent community to the magazine that reads and maybe sometimes writes, or do you want to keep everything anonymous?

We don’t have any fixed ideas about a target group, but we are of course extremely curious about who reads us. Our events are a good indicator of this. But in the long term, we definitely want to talk to those who are outside of the Berlin bubbles. The “London Review of Books” is not only read in London, but perhaps even by more non-Londoners than Londoners. Carolin Amlinger’s review arose out of an interest in literary sociology and not with the intention of reaching a specific target group. I also believe that this would have been a completely thought-out boomer strategy, especially on this topic.

And the community?

Community is very important to us. But we also have to keep our distance, on all sides, otherwise we will spoil our critical taste.

Since February 1st, the “Berlin Review” has been publishing at https://blnreview.de act Online editions per year with essays, reviews and memos. From June 1st, a print reader with selected texts will also be published twice a year.