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Time of India
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
10 quirky literary masterpieces every student should read before college
Before academic syllabi teach you how to analyse literature, these ten quirky masterpieces teach you how to experience it. From absurdist novellas to comic sci-fi and meta-narratives, this curated list helps college-bound students reflect, laugh, and rethink what it means to read deeply. These are not books for grades — they're companions for growth, self-discovery, and unexpected joy. Before college teaches you how to dissect literature in a classroom, these books teach you how to live with literature. They are strange, layered, often hilarious, and quietly brilliant. books that do not just ask you to read but to reflect, pause, and sometimes, laugh at the absurdities of the world. Here's a reading list for students about to begin their college journeys curated not for completion but for contemplation. The Metamorphosis Author: Franz Kafka Genre: Absurdist fiction / Existential novella Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a bug. No explanation, no dramatics. His family reacts not with horror but inconvenience. Kafka does not offer comfort or clarity, and that's exactly the point. This slim novella challenges readers to grapple with alienation and identity in ways that feel eerily relevant to young adulthood. For students on the brink of entering a world that will repeatedly ask them to define their place, this is a haunting, essential first lesson. Catch-22 Author: Joseph Heller Genre: Satirical war novel This novel unfolds in the middle of a war, but the real battles are not just in the air, they're in the logic traps and contradictions of military life. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like You Can Make Massive Side Income By Learning Order Flow Analysis TradeWise Learn More Undo Every rule has a loophole, and every escape has a cost. The phrase Catch-22 has become a cultural shorthand for no-win situations, and Heller's work is its origin story. For students preparing to navigate university bureaucracy, this book is a clever and often dizzying primer on how systems break down and people cope within them. Slaughterhouse-Five Author: Kurt Vonnegut Genre: Science fiction / Metafiction Billy Pilgrim is 'unstuck in time.' He moves between his experiences as a soldier in World War II and moments with aliens on a distant planet. This sounds like science fiction, and it is, but it is also an anti-war novel, a meditation on grief, and a study of narrative form. Vonnegut's quiet refrain — 'so it goes', after every death teaches students a hard, necessary truth: life's chaos is often beyond understanding, and still, we must continue. Waiting for Godot Author: Samuel Beckett Genre: Absurdist drama / Existential play Two men wait on a road, Godot never comes. Not much happens, yet everything happens. Beckett's play is an academic favourite because it resists interpretation. For college-bound students, it offers early exposure to the complexities of meaning-making. What do we do while waiting for things we cannot control? Why do we keep going? These are questions that arrive early in college life. Beckett simply asks them sooner. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Author: Douglas Adams Genre: Comic science fiction Earth is destroyed in the first few pages and a man in a bathrobe is saved by a friend who turns out to be an alien. They travel across galaxies with nothing but a towel and dry wit. Douglas Adams's cult classic is wildly entertaining, but it is also sneakily philosophical. Beneath the absurdity is a gentle reminder that most of life's big questions do not have answers, and sometimes, the smartest thing to do is laugh while asking them anyway. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Author: Italo Calvino Genre: Postmodern fiction / Metafiction This book begins with you, the reader, trying to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Then the book changes. Again, and again. Calvino crafts a literary puzzle where each chapter becomes a new story and a new voice. For students about to spend years reading critically, this novel is a bold introduction to meta-fiction and narrative experimentation. It gently destabilises traditional ideas of plot, identity, and authorship and does so with quiet charm. The Importance of Being Earnest Author: Oscar Wilde Genre: Comedy of manners / Satirical play Before sarcasm had a name, Wilde mastered it. This Victorian comedy of manners takes on double lives, mistaken identities, and the absurdity of social conventions. Every line is sharp, deliberate, and quotable. At just over an hour to read, it is brief but brilliant. Students stepping into adulthood will appreciate how Wilde pokes fun at what society expects one to do. One Hundred Essays I Don't Have Time to Write Author: Sarah Ruhl Genre: Essay collection / Literary non-fiction Ruhl is a playwright but in this collection, she becomes a thinker on everyday life. Her essays are short, observational, and surprisingly profound. Topics range from parenthood to punctuation. For students with shrinking attention spans and expanding workloads, this book models how intellectual reflection can thrive in fragments. It is a reminder that writing and thinking need not be long to be meaningful. Me Talk Pretty One Day Author: David Sedaris Genre: Humorous autobiographical essays Sedaris's essays on trying to learn French in Paris, coping with a lisp, and navigating eccentric family dynamics are deeply funny but never cruel. His humour disarms without dismissing the awkwardness of becoming an adult. For students anxious about entering new environments, Sedaris offers proof that vulnerability and wit can coexist, and even flourish. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Author: Mark Haddon Genre: Mystery / Coming-of-age fiction Told from the perspective of a teenage boy on the autism spectrum, this novel is part mystery, part coming-of-age story. Christopher wants to solve the case of a dead dog, what unfolds is a tender and mathematical journey through grief, truth, and emotional discovery. It is a necessary read for young adults learning to value different ways of seeing, thinking, and being. Before you begin reading This list is not about reading the longest books or the most awarded ones. It is about encountering voices that defy easy categorisation, about spending time with ideas that do not resolve neatly. In college, you will be taught how to write papers about literature. Before that, let literature write something to you. Something odd, something essential and something that stays. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Time of India
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Words against war: Capturing the horrors of conflict
A still from the 1930 film, All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the novel by German writer Erich Maria Remarque. From Ernest Hemingway to Saadat Hasan Manto, writers have talked of the dehumanising impact war has on those fighting it, the trauma it fuels, and the absurdity that underlies it all A Bertolt Brecht verse published in 1939 captures the role of anti-war literature: 'In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times. ' It seems frail compared to weapons and realpolitik. But to give voice to the case for peace, when govts and populism try to silence it, is a very courageous act. Very resiliently humanist. Instead of death, it embraces the power of life. Notes on the killing In giving voice to the despair, dislocation and trauma that is minimised in war-makers' calculations, anti-war literature has an ageless, universal quality. Saadat Hasan Manto's short story Toba Tek Singh calls out the lunacy of neighbours killing neighbours. Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front underlines how primeval ideas of valour first seduce young men, then betray them with brutal mutilations ('They stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell-hole'), and finally shrink them into emotionally empty shells. Today's wars are newer. But Slaughterhouse-Five to Catch-22 , A Farewell to Arms , The Tin Drum and Train to Pakistan , the classics haven't grown old. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Gentle Japanese hair growth method for men and women's scalp Hair's Rich Learn More Undo Connecting millions Many anti-war books have autobiographical underpinnings. Some disguise this more, like Bertha von Suttner's Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling and some disclose it more, like Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July . But by far, it is Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl that is the modern world's most influential first-person anti-war book, even if this was not something it set out to do. In a hidden nest of rooms she quarrels with family, crushes on a boy, does schoolwork… and worries about the Gestapo knocking on the door. Why did she write it? What if she hadn't? The horrors of war cannot be captured in statistics alone. For countless readers, it is one account, one life, which connects them to the suffering of millions. Verses against tyrannies From Sahir Ludhianvi's Parchaaiyaan to Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach and Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est , poetry can carry its messages more elliptically. Or not. How straight is Siegfried Sassoon being in Does It Matter?, 'You can drink and forget and be glad, and people won't say that you're mad; For they know that you've fought for your country, and no one will worry a bit.' Or Faiz, resisting the tyrannies that torment the politics of protest, here: 'If a seal were put upon my tongue, what does it matter? For I have put tongues into the links of my chains. ' And here: 'There where you were crucified, so far away from my words, you still were beautiful.' In 2023, a few weeks after Gazan poet Refaat Alareer shared this 2011 poem, 'If I must die/you must live/to tell my story,' he was killed in an Israeli airstrike. To sabre-rattlers and philistines, that would convey the powerlessness of literature. But what they are deaf to, the rest of us hear loud and clear. Also read PART 3: Silent victims: Poisoned land, decimated ecosystems Also read PART 5: If you take a gun to culture, you kill the human spirit
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
North Dakota Gov. Strikes Down Conservative Bill Restricting Books For Minors
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong (R) blocked a bill that would have required libraries to put books that feature sexually explicit material in areas that are 'not easily accessible' to minors. The bill, which would have applied to public libraries and libraries at public schools, also threatens prosecution against those that don't comply. A two-thirds vote in favor of the bill in both the state's Senate and the House could override Armstrong's veto. But it passed narrowly in both chambers with neither side of the legislature hitting the two-thirds threshold — by a 27–20 vote in the Senate in February and a 49–45 vote in the House earlier this month. 'While I recognize the concerns that led to its introduction, Senate Bill 2307 represents a misguided attempt to legislate morality through overreach and censorship,' Armstrong wrote in a Tuesday letter explaining his decision. 'The bill imposes vague and punitive burdens on professionals and opens the door to a host of unintended and damaging consequences for our communities.' 'In the last 10 years, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Of Mice and Men, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Kite Runner, 1984, and To Kill a Mockingbird have all been targeted by obscenity laws,' Armstrong added. 'I don't pretend to know what the next literary masterpiece is going to be. But I want it available in the library. And if a parent doesn't think it is age-appropriate for their child, then that is a parenting decision. It does not require a whole-of-government approach and $ 1.1 million of taxpayer money.' The move comes as many conservatives across the country, including President Donald Trump, attack libraries and academic freedom. It also follows former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum's decision in 2023 to veto a bill that threatened criminal prosecution against librarians and aimed to require them to screen all books in the libraries for sexually explicit content. He did, however, sign a bill into law removing books with explicit material from children's sections in libraries. North Dakota Library Association President Andrea Placher said in a statement that the association was 'very pleased' about Armstrong's veto. 'Libraries in North Dakota are experiencing increasing usage each year, with more visitors, program attendees, and library card registrations,' Placher wrote. 'The North Dakota Library Association firmly believes that SB 2307 is an unnecessary bill that would significantly hinder the operations of libraries in the state. All libraries have established policies and procedures that make this bill irrelevant.' By contrast, proponents of the bill argue that it is necessary to 'protect' children from pornography. 'We are harming our children, that's all there is to it,' Republican State Sen. Keith Boehm, a sponsor of the bill, argued in a committee hearing, according to The New York Times. 'The bill is all about protecting kids from this material. It has nothing against adults,' he added. 'To fight this battle against the pornographers, pedophiles and groomers, we must cover this issue comprehensively,' Boehm also said in another instance, according to North Dakota Monitor. 'Not every library in the state has this material, but there is enough to support this legislation.' Rep. Ben Koppelman, another sponsor of the bill, said he is 'confident that most red-state governors would have signed that bill, and we'll just be back next time around to do it again,' according to The Associated Press. North Dakota Mayor Who Sent Lewd Video To City Attorney Resigns Supreme Court Signals Support For Religious Parents Against LGBTQ+ Books Michigan Townspeople Move 9,100 Books To New Home One By One
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Yahoo
How Dresden in Germany is capitalizing on its spirit of renewal
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). 'Safe travels. And don't touch the bomb!' It's a disorientating message to hear crackling through my phone as my Deutsche Bahn train glides through the outer suburbs of Dresden on a chilly, darkening evening. I feel like Billy Pilgrim, the time-travelling protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, barrelling headlong into the 1945 firebombing that remains intertwined with the fate of this German city. But the caller, art historian Dr Rudolf Fischer, is delivering his message with a chuckle. An unexploded Second World War bomb has been uncovered by builders in the Elbe River, and Dresden's Old Town is to be evacuated while it's defused. An hour later, Dr Fischer — a smiling, grey-haired man in a dark blazer — is standing before me in the Archiv der Avantgarden, the art museum of which he's director, just north of the Old Town. It's set in an extraordinary edifice known as the Blockhaus. Built in 1732 as a guards' house by Saxon ruler Augustus the Strong, the building later became a cultural centre, the House of Soviet-German Friendship, during the days between the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Dresden was part of Communist East Germany. It then became a Russian restaurant before falling into ruin and, finally, being converted into a modern conceptual art space in 2024, with a huge, polished concrete cube suspended above the atrium. Today it houses, among other things, around 1.5 million items donated by Italian collector Egidio Marzona. Dr Fischer shows me tubular Bauhaus chairs and desk lamps, expressionist paintings by the 20th-century Dresden art group Die Brücke and blueprints for geodesic domes by experimental US architect Buckminster Fuller. Over the course of its many lives, and through its fusion of traditional and cutting-edge architecture, the Blockhaus has come to embody the spirit that drives Dresden: the spirit of renewal. Dresden is famous to the wider world for its near-complete obliteration by the British and US air forces in 1945, and for its eventual reconstruction, in the original baroque style, of its historic core. With the unearthed bomb safely defused, I set out to explore the cobbled streets of the Old Town, admiring the onion dome of the Zwinger palace, the Corinthian facade of the Semperoper opera house and the splendid cupola of the Lutheran Frauenkirche. Today, these buildings look as stately and handsome as they must have done in their 18th- and 19th-century heyday, but they are, in fact, very new. East Germany's post-war Communist government lacked not only the funds to rebuild most of its destroyed historic buildings but also the inclination — they suited neither its anti-royalist outlook nor its preference for modernist architecture. As such, most rebuilding commenced after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989; the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche was completed in 2005, and the renovation of the Royal Palace is ongoing. It's an inspiring and impressive rebuild, but the architecture is only one aspect of Dresden's cultural renewal, which extends to ancient traditions and modern art forms alike. One company dragging Dresden's traditions into the modern world is Meissen, a high-end ceramics company that, in 1710, created Europe's first porcelain. In those days it was a bumpy, horse-drawn journey between Dresden and the Meissen factory, 15 miles away, so the products were packed in giant loaves of bread — a kind of edible bubble wrap. Today, Meissen porcelain is a Dresden icon, displayed most prominently in the Fürstenzug, a huge, yellow-tiled mural depicting a procession of Saxon rulers sprawled across an outer wall of the Royal Palace. Unlike most of its neighbouring buildings in the Old Town, this isn't a post-war reconstruction; the porcelain tiles, having been forged in the fierce temperatures of the kilns, survived the heat of the firebombing. It's fitting that porcelain is such a well-established symbol of Dresden — combining, as it does, both a delicate beauty and resilience. I walk alongside the Fürstenzug into Neumarkt, another Old Town square, where Meissen's modern face is revealed to me from the upstairs window of the company's boutique: a brilliant-white bust of Marilyn Monroe, revolving on a plinth, her mouth blowing a sphere of bubble gum rendered in pink glass. In the days of East Germany, Meissen produced busts of Marx and Stalin. The Monroe sculpture — a collaboration between Meissen and contemporary German artist Michael Moebius — depicts a cult figure of a different kind. Moebius's high-ceilinged apartment and studio is a short walk away, and he greets me at the door, a tall man in his mid-50s with a leather jacket and mop of brown hair. The apartment is filled with artworks reflecting Moebius's characteristic playful style. Daniel Craig, in full tuxedo, glares down at me from a wall, blowing a huge globe of bubble gum. A full-size Star Wars droid stands in a corner, its robotic fingers gripping a Prada shopping bag. Although it's not the festive season, the room is illuminated by a fully decorated Christmas tree. 'I leave it up all year,' he says with a shrug. Moebius's original bubble gum-blowing Marilyn artwork — a hyper-realistic painting — became so widely copied that it now appears on T-shirts and posters worldwide. For the artist, this recognition is just the latest chapter in a colourful life that's also seen him forcibly serve in the East German army, move to California, and live on and off for 17 years in the Playboy Mansion with his close friend, the late Hugh Hefner. It would have been an unlikely trajectory to imagine for a kid growing up in East Germany, dreaming of the cultural icons of the West. 'Growing up in East Germany gave me a hunger for more,' Moebius says. 'My hobby was painting, and I always drew characters from Disney, which was highly forbidden. Symbols like Coca-Cola and Donald Duck were seen as a threat.' It's poetic that the artist has now combined one of Western pop culture's greatest symbols, Marilyn Monroe, with the iconic medium of Meissen porcelain, which far predates the trauma dealt to Dresden by the Second World War or the Communist era. 'Everyone here grew up with Meissen, this white gold,' he says. 'Families would pass it down through the generations. So I couldn't have dreamed of a better collaboration. It means so much.' Another of Dresden's great cultural assets is classical music. The Staatskapelle Dresden, founded in 1548, is one of the world's oldest orchestras. Baroque opera house the Semperoper was largely destroyed in the firebombing of 1945, but was deemed so integral to the fabric of the city that even the staunchly modernist Communist government opted to rebuild it in its original style, reopening it in 1985. The renewal of the surrounding Theaterplatz square continues apace, with the opening in 2023 of restaurant Opera, set in a mid-century modern space in yet another rebuilt historic structure opposite the Semperoper. The restaurant is run by Benjamin Biedlingmaier, who previously helped Caroussel, another rarefied Dresden restaurant, win a Michelin star for its gourmet cuisine. 'Here, I had to do something new,' he tells me over a glass of crisp, white Saxon wine. 'The idea at Opera is more casual. I don't want another Michelin star; we want to welcome people in from the street.' The food reflects Benjamin's interest in fusing traditional German cuisine with wider influences — alongside veal schnitzel with cranberries, I order spiced cauliflower with tahini and pomegranate, followed by a slice of eierschecke, a Saxon cheesecake topped with a layer of vanilla custard. It's all delicious, but I can't linger for long, as I have one final appointment this evening. It's not just the classical arts that are raising the roofs of Dresden's historic, resurrected buildings. In the nightlife district of Neustadt ('new town'), a former dairy building now houses Carte Blanche, the largest theatre in Europe for travesty — a type of burlesque drag theatre. The show unfolds in a blaze of sequins, diamanté tiaras and lavish costumes, the performers rolling skilfully through a setlist of jazz, vaudeville and French pop standards: an artful take on the drag medium. 'There's a bit of a difference between travesty and drag,' performer Josi Diamond tells me backstage after the show as she removes her 1920s flapper make-up in the mirror. 'Travesty is the older art form. We sing chansons. And there are more feathers.' This last line is delivered with the kind of understatement not typically associated with drag queens — there are so many feather boas hung on every nearby surface it feels like we're inside a huge down pillow. 'We have a big theatre scene in Dresden,' Josi says. 'It's not just the Semperoper, but smaller theatres, too. It's a great place to express yourself artistically.' Nowhere can escape the past, and this is particularly true of Dresden. The clink of hammers still carries across the Neumarkt from workers restoring the Royal Palace, 80 years after its destruction — and, as I learned on my first day in the city, relics of war still lurk beneath the surface. But this isn't a place mired in its history — it's one looking to the future, where the tragedies of the past are stoking the fires of rebirth. Published in the April 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
National Geographic
15-04-2025
- National Geographic
How this German city is capitalizing on its spirit of renewal
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). 'Safe travels. And don't touch the bomb!' It's a disorientating message to hear crackling through my phone as my Deutsche Bahn train glides through the outer suburbs of Dresden on a chilly, darkening evening. I feel like Billy Pilgrim, the time-travelling protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, barrelling headlong into the 1945 firebombing that remains intertwined with the fate of this German city. But the caller, art historian Dr Rudolf Fischer, is delivering his message with a chuckle. An unexploded Second World War bomb has been uncovered by builders in the Elbe River, and Dresden's Old Town is to be evacuated while it's defused. An hour later, Dr Fischer — a smiling, grey-haired man in a dark blazer — is standing before me in the Archiv der Avantgarden, the art museum of which he's director, just north of the Old Town. It's set in an extraordinary edifice known as the Blockhaus. Built in 1732 as a guards' house by Saxon ruler Augustus the Strong, the building later became a cultural centre, the House of Soviet-German Friendship, during the days between the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Dresden was part of Communist East Germany. It then became a Russian restaurant before falling into ruin and, finally, being converted into a modern conceptual art space in 2024, with a huge, polished concrete cube suspended above the atrium. Today it houses, among other things, around 1.5 million items donated by Italian collector Egidio Marzona. Dr Fischer shows me tubular Bauhaus chairs and desk lamps, expressionist paintings by the 20th-century Dresden art group Die Brücke and blueprints for geodesic domes by experimental US architect Buckminster Fuller. Over the course of its many lives, and through its fusion of traditional and cutting-edge architecture, the Blockhaus has come to embody the spirit that drives Dresden: the spirit of renewal. Dresden is famous to the wider world for its near-complete obliteration by the British and US air forces in 1945, and for its eventual reconstruction, in the original baroque style, of its historic core. With the unearthed bomb safely defused, I set out to explore the cobbled streets of the Old Town, admiring the onion dome of the Zwinger palace, the Corinthian facade of the Semperoper opera house and the splendid cupola of the Lutheran Frauenkirche. Today, these buildings look as stately and handsome as they must have done in their 18th- and 19th-century heyday, but they are, in fact, very new. East Germany's post-war Communist government lacked not only the funds to rebuild most of its destroyed historic buildings but also the inclination — they suited neither its anti-royalist outlook nor its preference for modernist architecture. As such, most rebuilding commenced after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989; the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche was completed in 2005, and the renovation of the Royal Palace is ongoing. It's an inspiring and impressive rebuild, but the architecture is only one aspect of Dresden's cultural renewal, which extends to ancient traditions and modern art forms alike. Repurposed factory buildings are a common sight in the heart of the city Photograph by Christian Kerber Restaurant Anna im Schloss serves traditional East German dishes within the surrounds of the Royal Palace. Photograph by Christian Kerber Old methods, modern art One company dragging Dresden's traditions into the modern world is Meissen, a high-end ceramics company that, in 1710, created Europe's first porcelain. In those days it was a bumpy, horse-drawn journey between Dresden and the Meissen factory, 15 miles away, so the products were packed in giant loaves of bread — a kind of edible bubble wrap. Today, Meissen porcelain is a Dresden icon, displayed most prominently in the Fürstenzug, a huge, yellow-tiled mural depicting a procession of Saxon rulers sprawled across an outer wall of the Royal Palace. Unlike most of its neighbouring buildings in the Old Town, this isn't a post-war reconstruction; the porcelain tiles, having been forged in the fierce temperatures of the kilns, survived the heat of the firebombing. It's fitting that porcelain is such a well-established symbol of Dresden — combining, as it does, both a delicate beauty and resilience. I walk alongside the Fürstenzug into Neumarkt, another Old Town square, where Meissen's modern face is revealed to me from the upstairs window of the company's boutique: a brilliant-white bust of Marilyn Monroe, revolving on a plinth, her mouth blowing a sphere of bubble gum rendered in pink glass. In the days of East Germany, Meissen produced busts of Marx and Stalin. The Monroe sculpture — a collaboration between Meissen and contemporary German artist Michael Moebius — depicts a cult figure of a different kind. Ceramics company Meissen created the first porcelain in Europe in 1710 and is in business to this day. Photograph by Christian Kerber Art like this bust of Marilyn Monroe on display at Meissen's shop in Neumarkt, shows the local blend of new and old. Photograph by Christian Kerber Moebius's high-ceilinged apartment and studio is a short walk away, and he greets me at the door, a tall man in his mid-50s with a leather jacket and mop of brown hair. The apartment is filled with artworks reflecting Moebius's characteristic playful style. Daniel Craig, in full tuxedo, glares down at me from a wall, blowing a huge globe of bubble gum. A full-size Star Wars droid stands in a corner, its robotic fingers gripping a Prada shopping bag. Although it's not the festive season, the room is illuminated by a fully decorated Christmas tree. 'I leave it up all year,' he says with a shrug. Moebius's original bubble gum-blowing Marilyn artwork — a hyper-realistic painting — became so widely copied that it now appears on T-shirts and posters worldwide. For the artist, this recognition is just the latest chapter in a colourful life that's also seen him forcibly serve in the East German army, move to California, and live on and off for 17 years in the Playboy Mansion with his close friend, the late Hugh Hefner. It would have been an unlikely trajectory to imagine for a kid growing up in East Germany, dreaming of the cultural icons of the West. 'Growing up in East Germany gave me a hunger for more,' Moebius says. 'My hobby was painting, and I always drew characters from Disney, which was highly forbidden. Symbols like Coca-Cola and Donald Duck were seen as a threat.' It's poetic that the artist has now combined one of Western pop culture's greatest symbols, Marilyn Monroe, with the iconic medium of Meissen porcelain, which far predates the trauma dealt to Dresden by the Second World War or the Communist era. 'Everyone here grew up with Meissen, this white gold,' he says. 'Families would pass it down through the generations. So I couldn't have dreamed of a better collaboration. It means so much.' Another of Dresden's great cultural assets is classical music. The Staatskapelle Dresden, founded in 1548, is one of the world's oldest orchestras. Baroque opera house the Semperoper was largely destroyed in the firebombing of 1945, but was deemed so integral to the fabric of the city that even the staunchly modernist Communist government opted to rebuild it in its original style, reopening it in 1985. The renewal of the surrounding Theaterplatz square continues apace, with the opening in 2023 of restaurant Opera, set in a mid-century modern space in yet another rebuilt historic structure opposite the Semperoper. The restaurant is run by Benjamin Biedlingmaier, who previously helped Caroussel, another rarefied Dresden restaurant, win a Michelin star for its gourmet cuisine. The Semperoper is the Dresden's emblematic Baroque opera house. Photograph by Christian Kerber Carte Blanche is Europe's largest travesty theatre. Photograph by Christian Kerber 'Here, I had to do something new,' he tells me over a glass of crisp, white Saxon wine. 'The idea at Opera is more casual. I don't want another Michelin star; we want to welcome people in from the street.' The food reflects Benjamin's interest in fusing traditional German cuisine with wider influences — alongside veal schnitzel with cranberries, I order spiced cauliflower with tahini and pomegranate, followed by a slice of eierschecke, a Saxon cheesecake topped with a layer of vanilla custard. It's all delicious, but I can't linger for long, as I have one final appointment this evening. It's not just the classical arts that are raising the roofs of Dresden's historic, resurrected buildings. In the nightlife district of Neustadt ('new town'), a former dairy building now houses Carte Blanche, the largest theatre in Europe for travesty — a type of burlesque drag theatre. The show unfolds in a blaze of sequins, diamanté tiaras and lavish costumes, the performers rolling skilfully through a setlist of jazz, vaudeville and French pop standards: an artful take on the drag medium. 'There's a bit of a difference between travesty and drag,' performer Josi Diamond tells me backstage after the show as she removes her 1920s flapper make-up in the mirror. 'Travesty is the older art form. We sing chansons. And there are more feathers.' This last line is delivered with the kind of understatement not typically associated with drag queens — there are so many feather boas hung on every nearby surface it feels like we're inside a huge down pillow. 'We have a big theatre scene in Dresden,' Josi says. 'It's not just the Semperoper, but smaller theatres, too. It's a great place to express yourself artistically.' Nowhere can escape the past, and this is particularly true of Dresden. The clink of hammers still carries across the Neumarkt from workers restoring the Royal Palace, 80 years after its destruction — and, as I learned on my first day in the city, relics of war still lurk beneath the surface. But this isn't a place mired in its history — it's one looking to the future, where the tragedies of the past are stoking the fires of rebirth. Published in the April 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK). To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
