We had already planned to visit the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, but as it always happens..... Well, this year it should finally work out.

It's Santa Claus. This date is also honoured at home by Filiz Penzkofer - although her Bavarian father knows other traditions than what the Turkish grandmother makes of this Christian festival.

The Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk is known to many people in Germany who are interested in literature. No question.

I opened the editorial door just a crack, just enough for my head to fit through. "May I come inside?"

The writer Doğan Akhanlı, born in 1957 in Şavşat in the province of Artvin, is regarded in the western hemisphere as a true advocate of human rights, which he emphatically demands from the political rulers, probably also because of his own life experience in Turkey.

As one of the most successful German thriller authors of modern times, Sebastian Fitzek can look back on a great career in the field of thriller and crime literature, especially in recent years.

"I want to go to the parade," says my wife Rita. She means the carnival procession in our district. This is one of the small clubs that decorate their floats and parade through the streets of their district of Cologne with little money but all the more attention to detail.

It was this quote, which is commonly and often attributed to Berthold Brecht, that we found among other graffiti under a car bridge in Weil and thus obliged us to do a little research.

Allan Huglstad is a retired officer from the Royal Danish Defense College. He has been educated in general staff (Denmark), humanitarian law (Italy), logistics (Denmark), intelligence (UK) and pedagogy (Denmark).

Once upon a time there lived three grand and of course very famous knights. The knight Heinz with the long sword, the knight Bert with the long beard and the knight Fritz with the spear at the Spitz.

Understandably, we also wanted to use our stay in England near the medieval town of Stratford-upon-Avon to learn a little more about the author Shakespeare, because some of his works were still too good to remember in school and college.

Priscilla Mary Işın is a food historian and author of Gülbeşeker: Türk Tatlıları Tarihi, a history of Turkish sweets and puddings published by Yapı Kredi Yayınları in 2008.

After some years of traveling, the author of the series SOKO Camper, cabaret artist "Renaade Stempfle" and Camper Angelika Wesner was able to turn her passion into a profession.

Thessalonica Book Fair is a fair for booksellers and book lovers. Publishers from all over the world publish their latest publications.

The internationally renowned author Zülfü Livaneli has published his new novel entitled "Unrest", but is not allowed to advertise it.

He was born in 15th September 1961 in Konya, Ereğli. He finished primary and high school where he was born. In 1980, he was arrested by the 12th September military court and underwent a trial for the 141-146 articles of the Turkish Criminal Code. He was forced to stay as a prisoner in different prisons in the country. He was banned. He could not continue his higher education.

I discovered the Datca Peninsula, in the southwestern corner of Turkey, purely by accident. This was in 2005. I’d never been to Turkey and was trying to find a rental house somewhere — anywhere on any coast of the country — where my husband and I could spend the month of June. 

“I'm Yunus, mystic of sorrow/Suffering wounds from top to toe/In the Friend's hands I writhe in woe/ Come see what love has done to me.”
- Yunus Emre

Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli  1923) is one of Turkey's leading writers.  He has long been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, on the strength of Memed, My Hawk.

The Yollarda project has invited 48 European authors to Turkey – and among them was the young Berlin author Björn Kern. He offers us his views on why Turks have such a negative view of Germans and what could be undertaken to turn things around.