For Helge Timmerberg, traveling and writing belong together like a safari belongs to Africa. He dedicated his latest book “African Queen” to the latter – a literary adventure trip to the black continent.
Good stories live from good sentences. God knows this too, which is why he throws a lump of literary genius in human form onto the earth every few years. Sometime in the 50s, he wrapped his present with Helge Timmerberg. This is as good as proven, because when he decided to dedicate his life to writing some 40 years ago, he was in the heights of the Himalayas. You rarely get closer to the Lord in heaven, so he certainly had a hand in it. Since then, Helge Timmerberg has traveled the world, taught us that in Cuba the chickens are more expensive than the girls, claimed “Tigers don’t eat yogis” (Solibro, 2001) or wrote fables about “The House of Talking Animals” in Marrakech (Rowohlt, 2007). The adventures didn’t get any easier with time, and when he “Around the world in 80 days” (Rowohlt, 2008), he was afraid of pretty much everything. But: “If I feel fear, then I know: Hey, go through it, it’ll be cool behind it.” Africa was the last place he traveled to for his new book “African Queen” on the hunt for big game stories. A novella ends where it began: Good stories live from good sentences and Helge Timmerberg’s sentences are for eternity.
