Ariane Müller

2013

Book, 19.7 x 13 cm, 208 p., language : German, publisher : Starship Verlag, Berlin, ISBN : 978-3-7204-0210-1.
Materials: ink, paper

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2027/561).

Literary synopsis

One of the four headquarters of the United Nations, the only one in Africa and in a developing country is located in Nairobi. Nairobi is a focal point for those modern globalized travellers that, without finding much contact with the places where they happen to be, hold their conferences, negotiate their businesses or represent the interests of their clients. At the same time, Nairobi is a real town. A city that is often very incomprehensible from a European perspective in their juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, disenchanted population and international tourists.

The narrator in Handbuch für die Reise durch Afrika moves between two worlds. The closed world of international negotiations with hotels, clubs, ambassador receptions and time slots between two transcontinental flights, and the reality of its inhabitants, surrounded by American television series and of NGOs sponsored AIDS posters and determined by the surprises of local politics and traditional ideas. But there are a lot more people who are here: adventurers, assistants of the international cooperation, descendants of colonial Kenya and people looking for the exotic, drugs or sex. These people meet each other. They meet each other faster and easier in Africa, where their strangeness makes them visible at any time. 

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