29^th Leukerbad International Literary Festival

Authors

Stefan Weidner

Germany

Stefan Weidner was born in 1967 in Cologne. He studied Islamic Studies, philosophy, and German language and literature in Göttingen, Damascus, Berkeley, and Bonn. He currently works as a freelance writer, translator, and literary critic in Cologne. As a journalist, he writes for numerous publications including the FAZ, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Deutschlandradio and WDR-Hörfunk. He also served as Editor in Chief of Art & Thought/Fikrun wa Fann—a cultural magazine published in Arabic, Persian, and English, which promotes dialogue between Western and Islamic cultures. He has translated and edited many volumes of Arabic poetry. In 2021, as an expert on the Arab world and an observer of international politics, Stefan Weidner published Ground Zero: 9/11 und die Geburt der Gegenwart (Ground Zero: 9/11 and the Birth of the Present), an essay proposing a new way of thinking about the world.
In 2024, he published the beautifully designed volume of poetry, Der arabische Diwan. He selected poems from pre-Islamic eras about which Goethe and the Romantics were enthusiastic. Weidner translated them into German, offering his readers access to a treasure of world literature.

Der arabische Diwan. Die schönsten Gedichte aus vorislamischer Zeit. Aus dem Arabischen von Stefan Weidner. Die andere Bibliothek 2024 Ground Zero: 9/11 und die Geburt der Gegenwart. Hanser 2021
1001. Die Literaturen des Orients. Edition Converso 2019
Jenseits des Westens: Für ein neues kosmopolitisches Denken. Hanser 2018

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