My relationship with Africa is a literary one, because in literature the longings, dreams, fears and hopes of people can be seen. And the farther these stories, novels or poems have already carried me for decades, the more remarkably the cultural wealth of this continent unfolds, the more familiar their distant passions, wishes, worries and values. Africa, so far and yet so near.
FROM: SZENE AFRIKA [AFRICAN TABLEAU], BRANDES & APSEL VERLAG, FRANKFURT AM MAIN 2012
For me, Manfred Loimeier, Africa begins in Lower Bavaria. This is where I was born. And the Danube is a river that flows through Africa – much like the Congo in the Heart of Darkness. I was born in Passau, at the time a symbol of underdevelopment and political backwardness, and the icon of disastrous flooding.
