Xuemo World Literature Forum Confronts Spiritual Void in AI Era at Frankfurt Book Fair

The Xuemo World Literature Forum, hosted by Ruxue International Media Inc, convened at the Frankfurt Book Fair with writers, scholars, publishers, and artists from China, Germany, the U.K., Norway, and Turkey addressing literature's capacity to illuminate existential voids in an increasingly automated world. The gathering centered on a pressing contemporary question: What can literature offer humanity as it accelerates into an AI-driven future characterized by data overload and spiritual dislocation?

The forum launched with two new publications by Chinese author Xuemo: Eternal Love, an English edition philosophical novel examining death, transformation, and spiritual freedom translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin, and The Way Out: Women's Spiritual Awakening in the Age of AI, a Chinese edition meditation on female empowerment and resilience in the algorithm age. Xuemo's keynote speech challenged creators to become lamps in a darkening world, asserting that while death remains inevitable, meaning represents a conscious choice. His declaration that emptiness signifies not apathy but the freedom born of awakened love resonated deeply with attendees, as did his advocacy for compassion over control and wisdom over computation.

Prominent international voices enriched the dialogue, including Toby Levin, researcher at Harvard's Hutchins Center and feminist scholar, who praised Xuemo's portrayal of women in works like Desert Rites as voices long buried beneath patriarchal silence now brought to life. Levin connected Xuemo's fiction to global movements against gender-based violence, including campaigns addressing female genital mutilation and the historical legacy of foot-binding. German sinologist and University of Bonn historian Cord Eberspächer identified philosophical parallels between Xuemo's concepts and European intellectual traditions, noting how his notion of creating meaning in the void echoes Kant's moral imperative and Martin Luther's vow to plant an apple tree on the eve of the world's end.

Reflecting on literature's place in an increasingly distracted digital landscape, participant Philippe Werck observed that while social media screams, literature listens, describing Xuemo's work as providing essential refuge. The forum concluded with Xuemo signing multilingual translation agreements for Serbian and Croatian editions of his work, expanding his literary reach to more than twenty countries. Readers can explore Xuemo's latest philosophical novel Eternal Love on Kindle. As the gathering concluded, the title's central message lingered: Eternal love does not fall, suggesting literature's enduring capacity to address humanity's deepest spiritual needs even as technology transforms how we live and communicate.