De gepensioneerde uitgever Reither ontmoet, na de vondst van een mysterieus boek zonder titel, per toeval Leonie Palm, die net haar hoedenwinkel heeft gesloten. Ze hadden beiden de hoop op een grote liefde al opgegeven, maar een autorit van drie dagen naar Sicilië brengt daar verandering in. Wedervaring is een schitterende kleine roman over literatuur en taal, en over de liefde tussen twee oudere mensen die niets meer te verliezen hebben, slechts alles te winnen.
This fictionalized account imagines the life of Sir Richard Francis Burton — a nineteenth-century British colonial officer with a rare ability to assimilate into indigenous cultures. Burton's obsessive traveling took him from England to British India, Arabia, and on a quest for the source of the Nile River in Africa. He learned more than twenty languages, translated The Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, and took part in the pilgrimage to Mecca, in addition to writing several travel books. This elegant, layered novel tells the story of Burton's adventures in British West India, his experience on the hajj to Mecca, and his exploration of East Africa. In each section, perspective shifts between Burton and the voices of those men he encounters along the way: his Indian servant tells the stories of his travails with Burton to a scribe; the qadi, the governor, and the shari in Mecca investigate Burton's hajj; and Sidi Mubarak Bombay, his African guide, shares his story with friends in Zanzibar. The concentric narratives examine the underbelly of colonialism while offering a breathtaking tour of the nineteenth century's most stunning landscapes. The Collector of Worlds won the fiction prize of Germany's Leipzig Book Fair in 2006 and the Berlin Literary Award, in addition to being a runaway bestseller in Germany.
"Die Lektüre dieses Buches gibt nicht nur eine Fülle von Denksanstößen, sie weckt auch tiefe Zweifel ob unsere kulturelle Evolution Schutz davor bietet, Tausenden von Frauen lebenslänglich zu traumatisieren."
