Gute Tage

Roger Willemsen has had the good fortune to meet some of the great personalities of contemporary history at a turning point in their lives, sometimes spending days, even weeks with them, sometimes in amazing places. In the literary portraits created after these encounters, the view of those "larger-than-life" people is always personal, sometimes intimate, sometimes even intimate, and finally, from the sum of observations, conversations and thoughts, almost an overall picture of man - his possibilities and limitations - emerges. The personalities described here - pop stars and politicians, scientists, actors and others - are united by the fact that they have recast the human possible and uniquely interpreted their role in the public sphere. Willemsen's portraits, in turn, are united by their author's gift for seeing deeper and promoting insights that often enough surprise even his interlocutors. In Arafat's bathroom - In a monastery with the Dalai Lama - In John le Carré's bathtub - With John Malkovich at the castle of the Marquis de Sade - In Margaret Thatcher's chambers - On Mikis Theodorakis's island of exile - In the jungle on the road with an orang-Utan - On the Harald Schmidt Show - With a Japanese CEO in the Geisha Bar - In Vivienne Westwood's workshop - In search of Jean Seberg in Paris - Sinead O'Connor with a view of the Elbe - With Tina Turner on the Côte d'Azur - In a boat with Michel Piccoli with Michel Piccoli - At Jane Birkin's home - In the bar of Henry Miller's last wife - Lunch with a "cannibal" - At Timothy Leary's deathbed - Talking to two cosmonauts in space - In front of a "monster" in the Berlin Charité.