Uwe Timm - Böcker

Join an incredible mynah bird on an adventure as he makeshis way in the big city.When a little mynah bird is stolen from the jungle, he uses hisamazing gift of mimicry to fool everyone in his path. This funny and charming book by Uwe Timm features fabulous illustrationsby Axel SchefflerA celebration of a small bird doing big things!Axel Scheffler is the illustrator of a whole host of belovedclassic children's books such as Stick Man and The Gruffalo

Uwe Timm was born in Germany in 1940. Just three years later his brother, Karl-Heinz, who was sixteen years his senior and a sapper in the elite SS Death's Head Division, was killed. His notebook was returned to the family, and the last entry read: 'I close my diary here because I don't see any point in recording the cruel things that sometimes happen.' When Timm decided to write this astonishing memoir, he feared the possibility that his brother's unit had taken part in the shooting of civilians and Jews. Yet he wanted to piece together his brother's experience, and also that of his nation, which once considered the qualities of an SS man so exemplary. As Timm unleashes his memories of this devastating time, he also pinpoints the questions that his parents' generation seemed unable to face, and offers new insights into the impact of the war on ordinary Germans.

Wagner, an all-efficient German engineer, takes in hand the job of rescuing a floundering construction project in the South American rain forest. But before he even reaches the site, his car runs over an emerald-green Acaray snake--marking him, according to local beliefs, for death. Things go from bad to worse. Wagner's slowly degenerating colleagues are useless; his attempts to help the workers bring on a strike that the military regime suppresses; and he botches up the Company's delicate system of bribery. The building is sinking into the red mud faster than it is being built. Losing ground, Wagner tensely observes himself losing balance and events take an ugly turn.

The Invention of Curried Sausage is an ingenious, revealing, and delightful novel about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food. Uwe Timm has heard claims that currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s, but he seems to recall having eaten it much earlier, as a boy in his native Hamburg, at a stand owned and operated by Lena Brücker. He decides to check it out. Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory - about how Lena Brücker met, seduced and held captive a German deserter in Hamburg, in April, 1945, just before the war's end-that is the tastiest part. Timm draws gorgeous details from Lena's fine-grained recollections, and the pleasure these provide her and the reader supply the tale's real charm.