Happy 80th, Willi Fährmann! (German novelist, "The Long Journey of Lukas B," 1985)
Lenona
In 1988, he was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
About "The Long Journey of Lukas B":
"Lukas' father, a painter named Karl, disappeared mysteriously when
Luke was nine years old. But the man remains a powerful force in his
son's life. As soon as Luke hears of his grandfather's plan to leave
their impoverished Prussian village and take a crew of carpenters to
America, Luke, at fourteen, is determined to go along, in hopes of
finding his father. On the difficult passage across the Atlantic and
as he travels through the South, Luke measures the stories he hears
about an odd but gifted painter called Charly against his
grandfather's memories of Karl. In the end, the truth emerges from a
trail of magnificent and telling paintings Charly leaves behind - a
truth Luke can accept only when he comes to understand the complex
emotions that would drive a man away form his homeland and the son he
surely loved. Set in Europe and America in the turbulent 1870s, THE
LONG JOURNEY OF LUKAS B. is a novel of many people and their several
voyages to find a better life, to discover their pasts, as Luke does,
while determining their futures."
http://www.goethe.de/kue/lit/prj/kju/aut/ag/fae/enindex.htm
(short bio)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willi_F%C3%A4hrmann
(in German)
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=willi+fahrmann+interview&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=b36c7832dbb01be6
(a few interviews in German - you can translate them)
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=willi+fahrmann&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#
(videos)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103378/
(About "By Way of the Stars" which is the 1992 mini-series based on
"The Long Journey of Lukas B.")
Lenona.