Media library for fiction

Here you will find English-language fictional texts for the 21st century, and translations from German into English.

Media library

Dubliners by James Joyce

The short story “Clay” from James Joyce’s Dubliners can help people to feel compassionate about other people and to open up to life, even if the social circumstances described might easily lead one to become cynical or to succumb to a feeling of overwhelming anger.

Isolated by Edward Viesel

The text album Isolated by Edward Viesel is a collection of 19 short and very short stories on the theme of “growing up”. The short story “On the Road, Again and Again” tells the story of a journey—or might one say, a quest?

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Information on copyright

According to the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz), copying and distributing a text without the consent of the “right holder” is prohibited until 70 years after the death of the author. (A translator is an “author” with regard to his or her translation.)

Public domain texts

On 1 January following the 70th anniversary of the author’s death, the rights to his or her texts become freely available to everyone. Anyone can do whatever they like with such texts. This legal status is called “being in the public domain”.

Copyleft licences

Apart from the two strict legal states„public domain“ or „copyright“, a middle course exists that makes use of copyright law but basically and generally permits certain types of use. The term “copyleft” is often applied to this middle course.

Creative Commons

The licence models created by the “Creative Commons” project (CC) are particularly widely used in this context. The following are two of the most important licences:

Texts published under the “BY-NC-ND” Creative Commons licence (Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives) are not in the public domain and may not be used commercially without the consent of the author.

Texts published under the “BY-SA” Creative Commons licence (Attribution - Share Alike) are also not in the public domain. Provided such a text is attributed to its author, and publication is carried out under the BY-SA licence as well, such a text may be used both non-commercially and commercially, and it may be changed.