Flucht nach Afrika

Eberhard Knorr:
Flucht nach Afrika
Berlin: Frieling, 1997
255 S.
ISBN 3-8280-0450-4
(Original paperback edition)

Ann Gopal, an attractive young woman, is exasperated by the excessive sexual desires of the husband, the psychiatrist Kalinaw. That is why she leaves him and takes refuge at Orlando Andrey's, a friend of her husband leading a withdrawn life in the mountains of Sierra Nevada. Orlando is a wealthy geologists who has undertaken a study on the potentials of primates. He breeds in his estate, a gorilla called Amandus, born eleven years ago in a zoological garden in California.

Ten months after the departure of his wife, Doctor Kalinaw hires Timo Hook, a slightly silly mastodon that he meets in a local pub and assigns to him the mission of finding Ann. Meanwhile Orlando and Ann, who have the intention to bring back the gorilla to its natural habitat, leave California hurriedly for Africa. They are followed by Timo Hook as well as Kalinaw, to South Africa, to Zambia, to Namibia and to Mozambique. Timo undertakes this journey not on account of the doctor, but for his personal interest, for he too has fallen in the love with the beautiful Ann.

This journey ends with the sudden death of Amandus, the gorilla which occurred in an ambush in Mozambique. This disappearance calms the eagerness of everyone putting an end to their respective projects. Nevertheless, this journey was the opportunity for each one of the five protagonists to form an idea about Africa.

Knorr's work, "The flight towards Africa" can be read as a re-questioning of a materialistic world in excess, consequently as the rehabilitation of a world of souls where the spiritual dimension of man prevails.
The excessive sexual desires of the psychiatrist Kalinaw represent a dimension of the materialistic world in so far as sex has become, in this world, a product of consumption. This is regulated and even stimulated by advertisements. It is therefore not by chance that Ann Gopal separates herself from her husband, Kalinaw to seek refuge with the zoologist Orlando. Ann is in search of a universe in which the natural dimension of man is respected.

Ann thinks she can find such a universe at Orlando the zoologist, whose interest for the primate Amandus, is quickly assimilated to an interest for man. This supposes that the vital space primates for will be the tropical zone. One however wonders whether it is a question of interest for nature or man. Is one trying to compare gorilla to man? In that case one implies that the gorilla is an ancestor or a distant cousin of man. Africa will therefore rightly be considered as the birth place of humanity. In this case it is the true natural habitat of the primate Amandus.

The journey of Orlando and Ann to Africa can be placed under the banner of a search for nature. The zoologist Orlando, wishes to return the gorilla Amandus to it's natural habitat whereas Ann is looking for true love. The relationship between Orlando and the primate Amandus resembles a man-to-man relationship, for Orlando complains that he is undertaking the journey towards Africa without the primate's accord. Contrary to the journey of the previous protagonists, that which Kalinaw and Timo undertake, it's purpose is clearly materialistic. There is a powerful need to satisfy purely egoistic desires. Kalinaw wants to find Ann, but he also knows that his companion Timo, has also fallen in love with the latter. One however notes that for both groups, the journey to Africa is tinted with exotism.

The sudden death of Orlando's primate in Africa leaves a question mark. The death can be seen as a re-questioning of the materialistic world and the great power of science. This disappearance is also a call to a spiritual rebirth to the respect and to the protection of nature. The two groups of travellers are called on here. Africa, the craddle of humanity where the primate Amandus succombs, can thus be seen as that mother who makes her children aware of their responsibilities. For Amandus disappearance can, to a certain extent, be assimilated to the disappearance of the origin of the human species. This death, however, is the consequence of a materialistic drift incarnated by the west (symbolised by the two groups of travellers). This "flight towards Africa" is therefore a re-questioning of the materialistic world which makes man a mega-machine of performance and efficiency, and above all, a rehabilitation of a pantheistic world which advocates the respect of cultural essences and differences.