Artistic Freedom and Author Responsibility: Legal Dimensions of Political Literature

In an era marked by global crises, political polarization, and contested truths, literature has re-emerged as a vital space for ethical reflection and legal imagination. This interdisciplinary volume explores how contemporary political authors engage with pressing societal issues—ranging from political power, democracy, dictatorship, colonization, sexual freedom, artificial intelligence to historical memory—while navigating the boundaries of artistic freedom and public responsibility.
Bringing together scholars from law, literature, philosophy, and sociology, the book examines the triangular relationship between author, text, and reception. It investigates how fiction can function as a site of dissent, normativity, and legal discourse, and how authors negotiate their roles as public intellectuals in a media-saturated world.
With case studies on writers such as Juli Zeh, Robert Menasse, Shida Bazyar, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michel Houllebecq, Günther Grass, Dave Egger, Svetlana Alexievich, Boualem Sansal, Jean-Philippe Pleau, and others, this volume offers a timely and critical contribution to debates on freedom of expression, the ethics of authorship, and the political power of literature.

Alexandra Juster is a qualified lawyer in Italy (Laurea in Giurisprudenza) and in France (French Bar examination). She is admitted to the bars in both countries and holds a doctorate in modern German literature. Having studied and lived in Austria, Italy, France, Spain and Germany, she is multilingual (mother tongue German, also fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian), enabling her to access research sources in their original language and to draw on her knowledge of several legal systems and logics. Combining her legal training with literary skills and publishing experience allows her to move easily between law and literature in an interdisciplinary way. Since the beginning of her academic career in October 2020, when she started research for her dissertation, she has completed three monographs on the contemporary author Juli Zeh. All three monographs deal with literature, law, current social issues and philosophy in an interdisciplinary way. She has also published numerous anonymously reviewed articles on a range of socially relevant topics, as well as delivering conference presentations.