Roger Willemsen

One of the most brilliant authors and intellectuals in the German-speaking world presents his program specially conceived for the festival: Me of all people! Roger Willemsen's travel narratives.

For forty years Roger Willemsen has been traveling on all five continents, meeting famous personalities such as the Dalai Lama in northern India, Arafat in exile in Tunisia, King Hussein in the Jordanian royal palace. He has hung out with the gold panners of Burma, the nomads of Afghanistan, the street children of Manila. He has been to war in the Congo, to the sleeping places of elephants in Bangkok, to the caravan leaders in Timbuktu, to the orangutans in Borneo. He has searched for the "ends of the world" and lost himself in the thicket of the metropolises. He tells of all this in one evening on a foray through the world and makes the audience his traveling companion.

Roger Willemsen published his first book in 1984 and then worked as a lecturer, translator and correspondent from London, and from 1991 also as a presenter, director and producer for television. He received, among others, the Bavarian Television Award and the Adolf Grimme Award in Gold, for his books the Rinke and Julius Campe Awards, and most recently the Prix Pantheon Special Award. Today he appears on stage with solo programs or together with Dieter Hildebrandt. His various bestseller books have been translated into many languages.