At Deutschlandfunk they have an interesting and fairly extensive (German) Q & A with Death and the Penguin-author Andrey Kurkov
They begin by talking about the fact that they're talking in German, interviewer Katja Petrowskaja asking him since when he speaks the language. Kurkov relates how his German publisher Diogenes asked him to learn the language in 1997, so that he could do a reading-tour in the German market. He took a crash course in German for three and a half weeks -- and then went on tour, noting that for the first two weeks he could read the texts just fine but didn't understand what he was reading.....
They begin by talking about the fact that they're talking in German, interviewer Katja Petrowskaja asking him since when he speaks the language. Kurkov relates how his German publisher Diogenes asked him to learn the language in 1997, so that he could do a reading-tour in the German market. He took a crash course in German for three and a half weeks -- and then went on tour, noting that for the first two weeks he could read the texts just fine but didn't understand what he was reading.....