THE scale of German media coverage testifies to the impact of the "Ireland and Its Diaspora" festival at the international book fair in Frankfurt. The presence of the President, Mrs Robinson, and the Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, ensured extensive reporting of its opening.
All national daily newspapers have published supplements on Irish writing and television stations have carried features on Ireland.
Festival organisers deliberately selected a broad range of writers to come to Frankfurt but the decision to omit novelist John McGahern was surely mistaken given his high profile here.
Die Zeit, Germany's leading intellectual weekly, reviews books by Frank McCourt, Bridget O'Connor, John Banville, Colm Toibin and others in the current issue. There is also a survey of contemporary Irish writing, examining the impact of social change on the country's literature. The paper's colour magazine is devoted to Ireland.
Novelist Hugo Hamilton, who comes from a mixed German Irish background, spoke yesterday of the relief he felt being in Germany "because everything is so much easier". Mr Hamilton was speaking during a discussion with the poet Micheal O Siadhail on contemporary Irish literature in Europe.
"Everything is talked through in Germany, whereas in Ireland so much is unspoken. There is no real vocabulary in Ireland for the inner life", he said.
For the poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, the Irish language offers access to a vocabulary of emotion she believes is unavailable to her in English. "I haven't the killer instinct for the word in English that I have in Irish," she said at a discussion on women and contemporary Irish poetry.
