Everything to do with letters
Under the title 'The Dutch thriller awards 2021', the four most important thriller awards (Gouden Strop, Hebban Thrillerprijs, Schaduwprijs and Zilveren Strop) will be presented from the Utrecht Library on Saturday 5 June. The ceremony will mark the start of 'The Week of the Exciting Book', which begins on Monday 7 June. With 'The Dutch thriller awards 2021', the Utrecht Library, readers' platform Hebban.nl and the...
Many avid readers will dream of their favourite author sitting at their table one day, talking about her work. Perhaps just as many avid readers will take their dream author on a stroll, want to drink lamb on a café terrace or take them to a darkroom. Or to a classical concert at the Concertgebouw. All can be done. Some will even just...
For years, writer and reviewer Dries Muus (36) beat around the bush. Until he realised he could, or rather had to, use a drastic event from his own life for his debut novel The Deviation. Stiff Two accomplished manuscripts ended up in the bin before Parool reviewer Dries Muus' debut novel saw the light of day. But third time's the charm, and after...
The 35th(!) edition of Reis door de nacht, the classic novel written by Anne de Vries, was published recently. As a ten-year-old boy, I sympathised intensely with the war adventures of Jan de Boer and his family members. The book is also a metaphor for my own struggle against darkness. It is a lovely spring day. In the ditch, a duck swims with her...
Godfried Bomans died half a century ago. Almost immediately afterwards, the Netherlands' best-loved writer sank into oblivion. It is time for a reappraisal of Bomans' literary work and even his political views. I delved into the archives, also looking for the few traces of Bomans in Amersfoort. First some round figures. Seventy years ago, he delivered a lecture...
Stage poetry is usually held in lower esteem than written poetry. While stage poets can touch so powerfully. Only during the Night of Poetry, every year in Utrecht, do we honour the performers among the poets. Then it's back to the 'jokers' who can rhyme, as was recently written about Ingmar Heytze in a podcast announcement. Spoken Word, the...
It is a fresh and lively book, the new novel by Adriaan van Dis (74). In his characteristic humorous tone, Van Dis broaches the big themes of our time in KliFi: climate change, the refugee crisis, political populism, (im)freedom. When, in the republic of the Netherlands, a crushingly hot summer turns into a hurricane and a village of refugees is wiped out, silence...
At the time Covid-19 flattened normal life, Frank Westerman had fortunately already done his research for his new book. To take care of his parents, he was suddenly living "at home" again for three months, in his boyhood room on the outskirts of Assen. Writing offered him the chance to escape to heavenly realms: Cosmic Comedy is about the human...
Last year, he became the second Scot ever to win the prestigious Booker Prize, and that too with a debut novel. The unexpected success of Shuggie Bain has a bittersweet edge for Douglas Stuart (44). For the story of maverick Shuggie, who loses his hapless, single mother Agnes to drink, is based on his own childhood. Shuggie grows up...
It is almost Christmas. Miss Kate and Miss Julia are giving their annual ball. One by one the guests appear, there is dancing, eating (greasy brown goose, marinated rib eye, pudding), there is apprehension about Freddy Malins who is bound to reappear drunk, and Gabriel gives a short table speech as usual. Gabriel fears his speech will be too pompous. He...
Het schmiert. Het rammelt. Het staat in Brabant. En mijn naam staat eronder, met ‘vrij naar’ als schaamlap ervoor.
When he left Dunbar over two years ago for a round-the-world bicycle trip, Scottish Dean Nicholson (32) could not have suspected how much his life would change. When he rescued a kitten a few weeks old from a ditch in Bosnia, his life took a completely different turn. Since then, Nala and he have been inseparable, cycling together...
Every writer dreams of being translated. Into English (world language), Chinese (big market) or, if necessary, into Icelandic (always wanted to go there on holiday). Sometimes it is necessary to give that dream a helping hand.
With these five tips, we are sure to come up with a wonderful programme, in this bizarre summer we are facing, in which we will hopefully be allowed to hit the streets again at all. My fingers are crossed for both.
It is no coincidence that I am rereading The Twelve Year Wedding just now. Because the tightness in the story resembles the tightness of our own time. Like Delia and Martin Bagot, we are trapped in a suffocating existence. Shun contact with fellow human beings. Miss the fresh air of visits to cafés, museums, film houses and theatres. Dublin 1917 is the Netherlands 2021.
‘Je geliefde voor je ogen zien ontsporen is het ergste wat er bestaat: het meest veilige wordt ineens het meest onveilige. Je kunt weken of maanden samenleven met iemand voordat duidelijk wordt dat diegene langzaam afglijdt in wanen.’
Four years ago at the Winternachten Festival in The Hague, we spoke about it with Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswani, who was disarmingly upbeat despite the fact that he can barely publish in his own country. On lack of freedom of expression and fiction in times of fake, this year's theme, Al Aswani could have a word. 'Freedom of expression is even worse now than under dictator Mubarak.'
I have come to realise that guilt creates a distance. To others, I sometimes come across as cool and reserved; this is because I unconsciously shut down to suppress my feelings and desires. I don't want to get in the way of others with my emotions. But that also means I rarely let the other person get close.
The awarding of the Boyer Trophy took place at Theater Bellevue in Amsterdam during A Theatre Author Thing You Must Attend, following the Boyer Lecture organised by the Authors' Union, which this year was delivered by Jetse Batelaan.
Dutch theatre is thriving, despite frantic attempts by various Rutte cabinets to bring it down. And even though money is always short as a result: a lot of new theatre is being made. More than ever, even. But.
There is a but.
In the year that writer and rapper Pepijn Lanen (38) became a father for the third time, he kept a diary. Vad3r is the account of an eventful and inspired time. 'I like everything about fatherhood.'
I started temp work at a time when you were somewhat of a dickhead if you were a student or had just studied, because the corps ball imitation of Jiskefet was so unprecedentedly popular. So a common greeting among regular employees who wanted to be nice was 'Hey dick! Fucked?'
In 25 years, Martine Letterie has written a small library of children's books: she has already published 120 titles in all age categories. She recently won the Thea Beckman Prize 2020 with Verboden te vliegen [Forbidden to Fly].
'Writing this book has made me realise that I cannot prepare my children for the world in which they will be adults. I cannot teach them now what they will need later in a society that does not yet exist.'
The very corona minister Hugo de Jonge, still a Rotterdam alderman in 2017, was the one who set writer Ernest van der Kwast on a new track in his life. A path that led to his new novel Ilyas.
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