SUBVERTING THE INSTITUTIONALIZED READING TOUR: RAFIK SCHAMI AND DANIEL KEHLMANN

Germany is more prolific than any other country in the world in promoting its authors through book tours. Given the demands placed upon Germany’s authors through the institutionally organized reading circuit, contemporary authors sometimes turn their experiences of these tours into themes in their own works. This essay primarily examines two novels in which the institution of the ‘Lesereise’ is a significant focus: Rafik Schami’s ‘Sieben Doppelganger’ (1999) and Daniel Kehlmann’s ‘Ruhm’ (2009). Both texts treat the difficulties and irritations to which authors are subject when they engage in such tours. While Schami’s novel uses the motif of the Double to explore Germans’ (mis)perception of cultural alterity and to underscore why the author took a hiatus from the reading circuit late in the 1990s, Kehlmann’s ‘Ruhm’, in which the institutionalized reading tour constitutes only one, albeit significant, thread, broadly examines issues of celebrity and identity in our highly technological age.