EU-DIGEST - special edition

Charlotte Roche's exploration of filth in all its meanings now tops Germany's literary charts. Soon it will hit the shelves in her country of birth. Wetlands, which has beaten Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and Ken Follett's latest to the top of Amazon's international sales list, has sparked a frenzy among major British publishers. Roche's German publishers last week refused to speak to The Observer or to arrange an interview with Roche to avoid pre-empting what is expected to be a massive UK deal and publicity campaign. 'No, nothing, impossible,' they said.

For whether it is the fantasies about sex, the polemics against the use of deodorants, the avocado cores grown specially for use in masturbation, or the detailed and inventive passages of scatological or genital description, Wetlands has left few indifferent.

French magazines have run articles on 'taboos and literature', Swiss papers have worried about moral corruption and, after seven weeks at the top of the bestseller list in Germany, no one is tiring of the debate. Der Spiegel summed up the message of the book as 'I stink therefore I am' - a reference both to the heroine's distaste for personal hygiene and her sexual fantasies about bodily odors.

For the complete report from the Guardian click on this link

Germany is investing in Latin American industry as never before. The Latin Business Chronicle reports that German daughter companies are producing 10 percent of the Brazilian industrial gross domestic product. Meanwhile, German industrial giant ThyssenKrupp AG is constructing a $4.6 billion giant steel-producing complex that will actively transform the mineral wealth of South America into vast amounts of steel products to be sold throughout Germany and Latin America by 2010. By that time, it will have taken 13,000 laborers a full four years to build.

Yet this massive investment project is about a whole lot more than just steel production. It is also about political cooperation between Germany and Brazil. The cooperation that is taking place between ThyssenKrupp AG and the Brazilian government is a means to further cement a business relationship that began all the way back in 1837. When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came to visit the steel mill construction site this past February, the Chairman ThyssenKrupp’s steel producing arm, Dr. Karl-Ulrich Köhler, delivered a speech that recalled these long-standing ties. After recalling this history, he added, “The steel mill, which involves an investment of €3 billion, will be a solid basis for the continuation of these excellent relations.”

For the complete report from the Trumpet click on this link