Everything to do with letters
With The river is a wound full of fish, Colombian Lorena Salazar Masso makes a powerful literary debut. What does it mean to be a mother, when do you actually BE a mother? Can you be a mother even if you did not give birth to your child yourself? As a mother without a child, are you still a mother? That is the theme of the...
With the new year, the new Filter Translation Prize jury has also started work. Thanks to the GAU (Group of General Publishers) and in cooperation with the ILFU (International Literature Festival Utrecht), the Filter Translation Prize 2023 will be awarded during the ILFU festival (22 Sept - 7 Oct 2023). A surprising number of interesting translations appeared in 2022. The nominations...
A story about love, but above all an ode to imagination. Perfect Days by Spanish writer Jacobo Bergareche is a passionate novel. Deadly marriage With the excuse that it is necessary for his work, Spanish journalist Luis visits a conference in Austin, Texas. But actually, the trip is mostly an excuse for his dead-blooded marriage to Paula...
What do you hold on to when not only the world is tottering, but also your own life? Where then can you find a safe place, a future? That is what Tasmania, Paolo Giordano's new book, is about. Crisis What came first: the worries about climate change and other world crises, or the crisis in his own life? The first-person narrator in Tasmania, a...
Since Roberto Saviano published his book Gomorrah and incurred the hatred of the Italian mafia, he has been living in hiding. What that is like, the graphic novel I'm still alive shows and feels razor-sharp. Roberto Saviano is 12 when he witnesses at first hand the murder of a man in his neighbourhood by the mafia. Fifteen years later,...
Her debut novel The Sound of the Night, in which simple seamstress Sira Quiroga became a spy for the British secret service, became a global bestseller a decade ago. Now Spanish writer María Dueñas (58) is out with a new novel in which she takes Sira to task. 'She did have to suffer a little.' Second part Because of the somewhat...
Millions of extra euros will go to public libraries in the coming years. State Secretary Uslu (Culture and Media) wants to use that money to ensure that every municipality has a future-oriented library facility. Specifically, that means filling gaps in the physical library network and expanding the online library. Linked to this, Uslu also wants to establish a duty of care for municipalities,...
Patronisation! Woke terror! These were some of the reactions from the film world when there were calls for the appointment of an intimacy coordinator at Dutch film productions. As if anyone could allow or display sexually transgressive behaviour in a studio with 40 other staff around it. Impossible! Yesterday, the book Wat de Fak! by award-winning actress Maryam Hassouni was published and in it, it states...
They are quite the characters, the main characters in the books of Jeroen Olyslaegers (55). Laughingly, he talks about Wilfried Wils, the protagonist of his 2016 bestseller Wil, who never stopped talking to his creator. 'He kept commenting. I hadn't experienced a book staying alive like that before. When the book was awarded...
Make it beautiful is the title of his new novel, but actually it was a book Thomas Verbogt (69) had been carrying around inside for many years. Now that it has finally been written, he feels lighter. Good person How can you be of essential importance to another person? And what do you have to do to be a good person?....
Paradais - 'paradise' - is the cynical title of Fernanda Melchor's new, disconcerting novel. The world the Mexican writer conjures up is more like hell. Polo, a dark-skinned 16-year-old boy living with his mother in a small Mexican village, has rather fucked up his life so far. He has been kicked out of school, smokes and...
Navarro's eighth novel From Nothingness revolves around Lebanese-Frenchman Abir Nasr, whose parents and sister are shot dead before his eyes by Israeli soldiers. Abir vows to take revenge one day. He and his little brother Ismail end up with strict religious family in Paris, who later move to the Molenbeek district of Brussels. While Abir's cousin Noura adopts the freer lifestyle of...
A sensitive novel about being allowed to be yourself, that is Arthur Japin's new book What silence wants. He tells the tragic life story of Anna Witsen, whose career as a singer was broken in bud. Who remembers them, the nineteenth-century writers and artists who became known as the Tachtigers? Poets like Willem Kloos, Albert Verwey, Frederik van Eeden,...
Seven years after her acclaimed debut novel Muidhond, Inge Schilperoord's new book is published. She delved into the experiences of a young Dutch girl attracted to the Islamic faith. When Inge Schilperoord (49) was a forensic psychologist in 2017, she spent time providing psychological examinations at the terrorist ward of a prison, where people suspected of having ties...
Gianfranco Calligarich's second novel translated into Dutch is as impressive as his well-received previous one. In the embrace of the river is a thrilling story that grips the main characters and the reader until the last page. Only two years ago, the first Dutch translation of one of the novels by...
In his new novel When I Come Back, Italian writer Marco Balzano reveals a hidden world: that of female migrants hired by prosperous Westerners to care for their demented elderly, children and household. In Eastern Europe, there is a word for the burnout affecting millions of Eastern European domestic and care workers: 'the Italian disease'. Migration is often portrayed as...
Argentine writer Aurora Venturini was 85 when she received the Premio Nueva Novela for The Cousins, which she had submitted anonymously. She finally got the recognition she craved, with this eccentric, fascinating story with equally eccentric and fascinating characters. In The Cousins, Yuna tells of her monstrous family of 'misfits'. Yuna herself is retarded and her younger...
The night of the sweet-soft child's voice of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, of course; but also the night of Joke van Leeuwen; of Maria Farantouri and Mikis Theodorakis; of 'illusory poet' Hans Klok even; and of the families of Nisrine Mbarki and Ivo de Wijs. I will try to explain the latter in a moment, in my unpoetic style, forgive me. On my...
Fourteen years after the death of her Jewish mother, presenter Dieuwertje Blok found her war diary. With her debut Dragging Lightness, Blok pays a warm tribute to the woman who gave her life. A profession in the spotlight - Dieuwertje Blok is no stranger to it. Her grandmother Saartje, who as the daughter of fishmongers grew up in the Joden Houttuinen...
In Brengschuld, Jan Siebelink returns to his familiar Sievez family, adding a new chapter to the story of the downfall of their nursery. Ever since his biggest success novel Knielen op een bed violen, writer Jan Siebelink has regularly returned to his characters Hans and Margje Sievez, their son Ruben, and especially to their nursery in Velp. Also...
For her new novel The Taxman, Ariëlla Kornmehl did not have to look far for her inspiration. From one day to the next, she herself became a protagonist in a story, as it turned out that her tax consultant harboured a silent obsession for her. "When I read all those observations about myself, I was in shock," she says. After the publication
On 8 October 2022, ILFU will organise the Night of Poetry in Utrecht for the 39th time already. It is almost sold out which means that two-thirds of the cost is borne by visitors. "The night costs roughly 100,000 euros. If we sell out, the vast majority of the revenue already comes from tickets and about a third...
What is the difference between a translation and an adaptation? In prose and poetry, every word and comma is translated, but it is different in theatre and stage adaptations. What freedoms do director and translator dare to take when adapting Shakespeare, for instance? These questions are at the heart of the latest edition of the illustrious programme on translation and all things...
Exploring Stories is the big festival day of the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU), featuring more than 30 international writers and thinkers on the current and urgent themes of our time. Exploring Stories shows that literature belongs at the heart of social debate. After all, literature begins where the news ends. Anyone who wants to understand the world better cannot do without...
Poet, writer and columnist Vrouwkje Tuinman will receive this year's C.C.S. Crone Prize. This will add her name to an honourable list of Utrecht authors who received this literature prize before her, including Manon Uphoff, Arthur Japin and Maxim Februari. "The C.C.S. Crone Prize is a special appreciation for a talented writer," said culture councillor Eva Oosters. "Utrecht is known worldwide as a city of literature....
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