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].
In her programme Night Animals, Ryanne van Dorst again goes in search of night owls, night workers and other insomniacs. It is a fascinating and beautiful TV programme, and Van Dorst seems to have a patent on extraordinary encounters.
Golden Calf winner Buladó is now our Oscar entry. That will satisfy advocates of more colour in Dutch cinema. And on Sunday, check out Festus Toll's When You Hear the Divine Call, a more modest but equally telling example of new light in Dutch cinema.
Meanwhile, November Music is keeping its nerve: the management is betting on live concerts with up to 30 people in the audience. In an email update to press and public, she did express her concerns: 'It will be some exciting days. After next Tuesday's press conference, we will know whether November Music 2020 can definitely go ahead.
'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.'
Every dancer is nostalgic. Heroes or icons of the dance world are given a special and honourable stage place in the inspiration of young dancers, of choreographers and also of the public. So too Koert Stuyf and Ellen Edinoff, and their Contemporary Dance Foundation.
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.
This week, Outside the World, the bulky, ambitious debut novel by Karl Ove Knausgård (51), was published for the first time in Dutch translation. A book about themes such as fear and shame, feelings that torment the Norwegian writer himself.
In 1987, British cello legend Jacqueline Du Pré succumbed to multiple sclerosis, aged 42. Although she had not played concerts for 15 years, a wave of grief washed over the world. In her short career, she had achieved more than many a musician in his or her entire life.
A story about the rise and fall of a fledgling rock band - it is not a revolutionary new idea. But although Utopia Avenue is a more 'ordinary' novel than, say, his bestseller Cloud Atlas (2004), in the hands of David Mitchell (51) even an ordinary story never becomes ordinary.
Those who read De opgang begin to understand more about Belgium: the country's gigantic split, the friction between the two parts of the country, and the rise and success of the Vlaams Blok. Hertmans has also come to a better understanding of how deep the cleavages and "the sorrows of Belgium" run.
Pièce de résistance will be the brand new Reconnaissance (Rusty Mirror Madrigal) for choir, percussion and double bass. Saariaho composed it commissioned by November Music and the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The first performance was scheduled at the German festival, which, however, was also cancelled. - A stroke of luck for November Music.
Marije Vogelzang is food designer: 'It's about getting people to take a different look at things they think they know, that they deal with every day and therefore overlook.'
More than 20 years ago, David Grossman's phone rang. A woman by the name of Eva Panić Nahir had something to say about an article he had published in an Israeli newspaper. Grossman smiles at the memory. 'What my piece was about I don't remember, except that she thought I had not gone far enough in my criticism of the government. I did find it refreshing to be attacked for once by someone from the left, instead of - as usual - the right wing.'
An ambitious young writer turned Dutch celebrity - Joost Zwagerman's life was turbulent, as was his character. That his marriage ended in divorce after almost twenty years, he could not bear. A year later, on 8 September 2015 - so exactly five years ago today - he ended his life. In her book The Longest Breath, his ex-wife Arielle Veerman looks back. There appears to be no resentment, only sadness.
This week, a massive explosion of 2,700 tonnes of poorly preserved ammonium nitrate destroyed most of the Lebanese capital Beirut. For German-Lebanese writer Pierre Jarawan, who lives in Munich, the disaster is yet another black page in the history of Lebanon, which he himself has only just come to know.
What festival director Viktorien van Hulst, together with her team, is pulling off seems almost impossible, but it fits the tradition she has developed since taking office. For a few years now, Boulevard has been as much about massive events as intimate encounters.
It is scorching hot in Paris on the day of the interview with Tatiana de Rosnay (58). In her new novel Flowers of Darkness, Paris suffers yet another heatwave, with the thermometer touching 48 degrees. 'The past few days have been almost as bad as in my book,' De Rosnay tells via Zoom from her Parisian study....
Barely three weeks into her job when the corona pandemic and lockdown came. So, for Halima el Ghamarti, who started as director of the Jongeren Cultuurhuis Kanaleneiland and Overvecht in mid-February, there is no other normal than the new normal: working from home, and doing so with an organisation whose main purpose is to connect young people in Utrecht with...
Immediately after the lockdown was declared in March 2020, Vincent Wijlhuizen, co-founder (along with Annette van Zwol and Ieme Soes) and director of the What you See Festival, set to work to come up with alternatives for the festival, which takes place in the autumn. 'We made several plans. We already had an ordinary plan, which went to all the funds...
The three of them are back together in the office for the first time since the lockdown on 13 March. The interview, in which director Emily Ansenk, music programmer Jochem Valkenburg and theatre programmer Annemieke Keurentjes take stock of the first - and hopefully only - online edition of the country's most prestigious performing arts festival, takes place a day after the lockdown. There was no...
With the million-seller The Shadow of the Wind, the first part of the four-part The Graveyard of Forgotten Books, Carlos Ruiz Zafón established his name as a writer in one fell swoop. His novel The Labyrinth of Spirits, published in late 2017, was the culmination of a year-long showdown with himself. Not long after, he fell ill; in early 2018, Zafón was told that...
Cabaret artist Hans Dorrestijn is known as a gloom and professional grumbler. But in recent years, Holland's blackest joker has less and less to complain about: he has had great success with his nature books and his cabaret shows, and won several awards. This week he turns 80, but he does not want to stop - his new book Wensvogels has just been published. In nine candid questions
'The spontaneous breeze should be planned at least 15 minutes in advance. After all, you have to buy tickets for a block of time. When you enter our venue, you immediately see all the security measures we have taken to protect staff and visitors. There are huge screens to separate the flow of visitors. There's a chance you won't get lost in... this time.
It still came as a shock, the sad news that comedian, presenter and theatre-maker Marc de Hond died yesterday. Around the beginning of corona, we were still in touch briefly about his theatre tour Voortrijdend inzicht, which he made as a legacy for his children. How unfortunate it was that most of the performances now had to be postponed indefinitely. His health situation...
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