review

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... 

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,... 

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... 

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...