"Orcs" from the east. How the West forms the image of the East. German script. Oshmann D.

What is the "East"? The geographical side of the world? A direction depending on the point of view of the observer? Colonial outskirts? Who decides this and why in the lips of the West the term "Vostok" often performs the function of a shameful stigma?

This book is a daring challenge. Its author, professor of German literature of the University of Leipzig, Dirk Oshmann, encroached on the holy of holies - the right to interpret history and modernity only from the point of view of the “winner”. Using the example of Western and Eastern Germany, he breaks the benevolent picture of the world of Western intellectual, convinced that the East is good only when it is completely similar to the West.

In a bright polemic manner, the author shows that this conflict affects the whole modern world based on the global fault of society, the inequality of cultures, old grievances and mutual claims, often manifested today in the most unsightly, radical forms. The book, around which hot disputes boil in Germany, will undoubtedly find a response from the Russian reader.