Foreign Rights Guide Frankfurt Book Fair 2015 De Bezige Bij The Busy Bee
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
FRANK MARTINUS ARION
PAUL AUSTER
SILVIA AVALLONE
NIR BARAM
ALESSANDRO BARICCO
KEES VAN BEIJNUM
PHILIPP BLOM
JORGE LUIS BORGES
JOSEPH BRODSKY
PETER BUWALDA
REMCO CAMPERT
ALBERT CAMUS
PHILIPPE CLAUDEL
HUGO CLAUS
TEJU COLE
WILLEM FREDERIK DAEM
JOﾃ記 DICKER
JAN DROST
INEZ VAN DULLEMEN
JESSICA DURLACHER
ELIZABETH GILBERT
PAOLO GIORDANO
DAAN HEERMA VAN VOSS
A.F.TH. VAN DER HEIJDEN
foreign rights guide frankfurt book fair 2015 de bezige bij at the frankfurt book fair 2015
WILLEM FREDERIK HERMANS
JOHN IRVING
STEFAN HERTMANS
AIMÉE DE JONGH
A.M. HOMES
RACHEL JOYCE
KHALED HOSSEINI
MIRANDA JULY
SIRI HUSTVEDT
LARS KEPLER
new literary fiction Katrijn van Hauwermeiren Henk Pröpper Geronimo Leon de Winter k.van.hauwermeiren@debezigebij.nl 4 Director/ Publisher 8 Hagar Peeters Malva Editor-in-chief Flanders 10 Honorary Cossack TommyFrancien WieringaSchuursma Melissa van der Wagt Director Author Management 12 Goldberg Bert Natter m.van.der.wagt@debezigebij.nl and Communication 14 Jan Siebelink Margje Publisher Cargo 16 Two Rivers Inez vanPeter Dullemen van derThe Zwaag 18 On the Skirt of the Universe Tonnus Oosterhoff Marjolein Schurink p.van.der.zwaag@debezigebij.nl 20 My Name is Julius Martijn Simonstranslated m.schurink@debezigebij.nl Editor-in-chief fiction 22 Fall FrederikDe Willem Editor-in-chief Cargo BezigeDaem Bij and Even Oog Birds & Blik Chris Kooi Marije denew Bie literary non-fiction c.kooi@debezigebij.nl m.de.bie@debezigebij.nl Paul Verhaeghe Authority Cargo Editor fiction De Bezige Bijand the Rediscovery Editor Europe’s Disease of the Ideal Guytranslated Verhofstadt Chris de Stoop This is My Farm Haye Koningsveld Frank Westerman The Battle for Srebrenica h.koningsveld@debezigebij.nl Iris Koppe LEV Editor-in-chief De Bezige Bij non-fiction
IRIS KOPPE
ERNEST VAN DER KWAST
ARNOLD VAN DE LAAR
HARPER LEE
DONNA LEON
HELEN MACDONALD
MARGRIET DE MOOR
MARCEL MÖRING
TONI MORRISON
ERWIN MORTIER
HARRY MULISCH
CHARLOTTE MUTSAERS
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
BERT NATTER
JO NESBØ
Arend Hosman a.hosman@thomasrap.nl Editor-in-chief Thomas Rap
Saartje Schwachöfer Jacques Schalken quality extraordinary s.schwachofer@thomasrap.nl j.schalken@debezigebij.nl Roland Sillem, Rutger Wilmink Dutch Masters Editor Thomas Rap Editor De Bezige non-fiction The Zaza Engravings Zaza Bij
24 28 30 32 34
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Marijke Nagtegaal Catharina Schilder literary thrillers m.nagtegaal@debezigebij.nl c.schilder@debezigebij.nl 40 Ross & Hartman Death’s Head Moth Foreign rights manager Editor De Bezige Bij non-fiction 42 René van Rijckevorsel Tunis Uta Matten Suzanne Holtzer succesful titles u.matten@debezigebij.nl s.holtzer@debezigebij.nl 44 Sacrifice Kees van Beijnum Foreign rights manager Editor-in-chief De Bezige Bij fiction 46 Jan Drost Thinking Helps 48 Aimée de Jongh The Return of the Honey Buzzard Ernest van der Kwast The Ice Cream Makers, Giovanna’s Navel, Mama Tandoori 50 52 Arnold van de Laar Under the Knife Van Miereveldstraat 1-3 | nl-1071 dw Amsterdam | P.O. Box 75184 | 54 David Van Reybrouck Against Elections nl-1070Mark ad Amsterdam | The Netherlands | tel +31 20 305 98 10 | fax +31 20 305 98 24 56 Schaevers Organ Man For the latest (foreign) rights news, please visit us at our stand in Hall 5.0 d87
preview 2016
Daan Heerma van Voss A.F.Th. van der Heijden
The Last War The Hard Way
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‘A novel with the momentum of a – elsevier
Leon de Winter Geronimo
‘Thrilling. A page-turner that will dispel any last ounce of boredom. (…) De Winter writes with immense vitality. His novels have a pace that would give a
A breathtaking what-if scenario about the capture of Usama bin Laden with characters that instantly steal your heart
Tom Clancy thriller.’
streamlined Jaguar a run for its money.’ – de morgen ‘De Winter stokes the fires of the imagination until the pages are ablaze. It’s an approach that makes him unique. Leon de Winter is the gutsiest author in the Netherlands.’ **** – de volkskrant
leon de winter (b. 1954) is a bestselling author both in the Netherlands and abroad, particularly in Germany. Hoffman’s Hunger was published in 1990, followed by many more novels, SuperTex (1991), Sokolov’s Space (1992), Zionoco (1995), and the Book Week Gift Serenade (1995). The novel The Hollywood Sign (1997) was made into a film with Rod Steiger, Burt Reynolds and Tom Berenger, followed by major bestsellers God’s Gym (2002), The Right of Return (2008) and VSV (2012). In 2013 the Anne Frank Fonds (Basel) asked De Winter and his wife Jessica Durlacher to create a stage adaptation of the story of Anne Frank. The play premiered in April 2014 and has been running successfully ever since.
‘Geronimo’ was the code word that the men of seal Team 6 were to use if they located Usama bin Laden. The commandos astonished the world with their spectacular operation. But did it really unfold as the official version would have us believe? In this novel, Leon de Winter plays a masterful game with that question. Geronimo is also the story of Apana, an Afghan girl who develops a passion for Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and the story of Jabbar, a Pakistani boy whose most precious possession is an old kitchen stool, a stool that could set the course of history off in a crucial new direction. Then there is the story of American ex-commando Tom Johnson, through whose compassionate eyes we view a world full of cunning and tragedy, a world that is at the same time magnificent. De Winter is the first author to call into question the entire official version of Operation Neptune Spear – in which Usama bin Laden was eliminated – in a high wire act of the imagination. World English rights: De Bezige Bij except US/North American rights (InkWell Management) • All other territories: Diogenes Verlag • Novel • 362 pages • 2015 English sample translation and synopsis available • Featured title in 10 Books from Holland (Dutch Foundation for Literature) 5
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Translated by Sam Garrett
ubl
Abbottabad, September 11, 2010
Usama bin Laden spent five years behind the walls of his safe house, or so the official story goes. That is not entirely correct. He regularly went out at night. In the early morning hours of September 11, 2010, too – eight months before Operation Neptune’s Spear – he slipped out of the safe house and took the motor scooter from the shed. As always, he was headed for a little grocery that was open around the clock. It was two-fifteen a.m. in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and ubl – the acronym which the Americans used for him, and which his youngest bride, Amal, sometimes whispered provocatively in his ear: “ubl, my sheikh, are you coming?” – was a happy man. He realized that he must now guard against hasty steps. He mustn’t allow himself to get carried away by the glorious thought that tomorrow, already he could achieve what he had been working for for thirty years; longer than that, in fact, his whole life, since he first saw the light of day. The tide was going to turn. Patience, he thought, patience. It would be unwise, after years of isolation and hardships, to make reckless use of his new knowledge. With what he knew now, he had the power to paralyze his opponents. Allah had rewarded his faith and humility. He had been handed a weapon no one could deflect. ubl felt like shouting out loud, letting his joy ring out down the quiet streets and up against the sleeping houses: I know it, I know it, I’ve discovered it, now I know what no one else does! Astride the rattling motor scooter, he smiled at the thought: it’s true, ubl will once again make the world sit up and listen! How, you might ask, did he disguise himself when he went out at night? From the descriptions I’ve heard, it went like this: ubl covered his head with an old-fashioned helmet in the form of half a leather ball, with flaps over his ears. A pair of bi-focal glasses perched on his nose distorted the appearance of his eyes, and around his neck and lower jaw he wore a scarf that hid a large part of his face. In the winter he wore a green, hip-length army coat of the kind that keeps men warm in large parts of Asia. Such coats are sold everywhere fairly cheaply, heavy coats of thick cotton into which an extra, sheepskin lining could be buttoned (the
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sheepskin wasn’t necessary yet, although the nights in this mountain town were already growing colder). For the rest ubl wore baggy beige trousers, tight around the ankles, what they called a “shalwar”, a model he’d worn for years in Afghanistan too, and the sandals on his feet were open and worn. There was nothing he could do to change or disguise his height. He was tall, much taller than most Pakistanis, but on the scooter his height was hard to judge. When he got off, he leaned on a cane and moved slowly, his back bent, as though he were twenty years older. He passed himself off as just another man making a nocturnal trip to the store called The Abbottabad Nite Shop, astride a scooter slapped together from spare parts. Lashed to the back of the scooter was a little icebox in which he could keep cool the ice cream he had promised his youngest wife. She knew him better than anyone, better even than his eldest wife. She was like a wild animal, with a petite but lithe body and a sense of intuition that stunned him at times. It was his duty to visit his wives, but the youngest, a woman with hungry eyes and thighs of fire, always knew his mood, even when he was silent. Even during the day, when he was preoccupied with cares, she could rouse him. His age meant that he would be unable to make love to the wife he was supposed to visit that evening, unless he took a blue pill – but the wives never complained about that. In Abbottabad he lived with three women. The eldest was Khairiah Saber, a child psychologist and the mother of one child. Siham Sabar was an Arabic teacher and had given him four children, including Khaled, who fortunately lived with them as well. And then you had Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, Usama’s youngest. She was seventeen when she married him, he was already forty-three. A few days after 9/11 she bore a daughter who was named after a Jewish female spy in the service of the Prophet. Yes, he was their leader, their helmsman, their sheikh, but he respected them. He did not deal lightly with his power over his wives. He never hit them, even though his faith allowed that as long as no blood flowed – a look or an admonishing index finger was enough to silence his wives, insofar as that was necessary. He shielded his wives from the despair and frustration he felt so often, and they in turn lightened his cares. The idea of betrayal was foreign to them – without him they were lost, they told him again and again, every day they prayed to Allah to protect him. And he beseeched Allah to protect his wives.
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new literary fiction
‘Incandescent and evocative debut novel. ... Beautifully melancholy closing chord that fully testifies to the power, solace and poetry of the imagination in general and this dazzling novel in particular.’ – trouw ‘Peeters cleverly unravels the myth surrounding Neruda without knocking him off his pedestal. Written, as befits a poet, in language that sparkles.’ – jan hagar peeters (b. 1972) has published several volumes of poetry: Enough Poems Written About Love Today (1999), Suitcases of Sea Air (2003), Runner of Light (2008) and Maturity (2011). She has won awards including the J.C. Bloem Poetry Prize, the Jo Peters Poetry Prize and the Poetry Day Prize, and was shortlisted for the position of Dutch Poet Laureate.
Hagar Peeters Malva Debut novel about the world-famous poet Pablo Neruda’s daughter Malva, a child not allowed to exist Malva is the daughter of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. She was born with hydrocephalus and soon disowned by her father. She lived in a foster family in the Netherlands and died during the Second World War at the age of eight. Hagar Peeters has Malva, after her death, pick up the pen that her father let slip from his hand when he died. She gives the girl a voice, and a fascinating life in which she meets kindred spirits with whom, as wise as she is witty, she comments on life on earth. Along with them, Malva tries to find an answer to the question of how it came about that Neruda, the irreproachable hero who stood up for the forgotten and downtrodden, denied the existence of his own daughter. She asks Hagar Peeters, whose father was a journalist in Chile when Neruda died, to be her ghost writer.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • English and Spanish sample available Novel, 245 pages • 2015 8
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Press on These Are The Names:
‘It is superb. It has won the Libris Prize in the Netherlands and, were it eligible, could really shake up the Man Booker. … This is a bravura performance. Far closer to Joseph Conrad than one might expect, it makes a case for the saving power of small continuities.’ – irish times
‘Highly intelligent. Wieringa will make you think and keep you reading eagerly to the final page.’ – times literary supplement ‘An intense, tough novel that manages to communicate the great effort required for all migrations.’ – il corriere della sera tommy wieringa (b. 1967) is the author of many novels including Joe Speedboat (F. Bordewijk Prize, 2006). His travel stories were collected in I’ve Never Been to Isfahan (2006) and in 2009 he published the novel Caesarion, followed by Don’t Go to Sea (2010). These Are The Names won him the Libris Literature Prize and in 2013 he was chosen as Book Week author and wrote A Beautiful Young Woman. In 2015 the Italian edition of These Are The Names saw him shortlisted for both the Premio Strega Europeo and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori. His work has appeared in translation all over the world.
Tommy Wieringa Honorary Cossack New stories from Wieringa – the imaginative power of a world traveller
This is the work of a flaneur, of a tourist and a traveller, of someone who wanders the earth with the motto ‘a walking dog finds bones’. In the Ukrainian steppe, Tommy Wieringa is dubbed an honorary Cossack by a drunken Cossack, in Vienna he goes in search of an illustrious doppelganger and in St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai he becomes the false bride of Christ. He is a hotel-dweller who writes with relish about wretched accommodation and restaurateurs who hate their clientele. No destination is so miserable that a story cannot be found in it. Wieringa’s earlier travel stories were praised as ‘delightful anecdotes, important and chance meetings, taking us to places we’ll never go, with a gift for observation that lends everything a deeply human feel. Travel as adventure, open-minded, receptive to the unexpected. That is the effect a born writer can have on us.’ That flag is now flying proudly above Honorary Cossack.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • stories, 240 pages • 2015 11
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Press on Natter’s previous novel Remington: ‘The novel is so rich that even if you read it several times you still don’t have the feeling you know or can see through it all. ... Without any showing off, Natter manages to touch both head and heart.’ – **** nrc handelsblad ‘A road novel that carries you with it for 400 kilometres through the thinking of two creative minds.’ – de telegraaf ‘A refined structure, beautiful linguistic usage without any frills, strong dialogue, interesting ideas about literature, music and fine art and, last but not least, a moving picture of a father-son relationship. Remington is a tremendously clever novel.’ – ***** hebban
bert natter (b. 1968) made his debut in 2008 with Desire Has Touched Us, which won him the Selexyz Debut Prize and the Lucy B. en C.W. van der Hoogt Prize. In 2012 he published What’s the Story with Love?, about which Vrij Nederland wrote: ‘A deft, success ful example of remarkable narrative talent.’ This spring saw the publication of Remington, which has been nominated for the eci Literature Prize.
Bert Natter Goldberg A sparkling novel about Bach and his mysterious pupil Goldberg, in which history and imagination come together Once, in a book about Bach, Sebastian Savage devoted no more than a footnote to the composer’s most famous pupil. ‘I regarded Goldberg as a completely uninteresting phenomenon,’ he says. More than a quarter of a century later, Savage decides to go to Dresden to look for the traces left by the legendary wunderkind in archives, letters, documents and the streets of the baroque city. He obsessively reconstructs the brief existence of one of the most shadowy figures in the history of music and manages to bring Goldberg to life in a series of bizarre adventures. This novel is an ode to Dresden, to the capricious flourishes of Rococo, the genius of Bach, the imagination and the tragicomedy of life. Goldberg is also an affectionate portrait of a man of our own time, who pursues his subject with unmatched intensity, without him self knowing why.
World Rights: De Bezige Bij • English sample available Novel, 628 pages • October 2015 12
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Press on ‘In My Father’s Garden’:
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‘I have never read a Dutch novel that is pure and so well written. He deserves all the prizes we have this year.’ – vrij nederland
‘A truly majestic novel … Anyone who reads this book without a lump in his throat cannot be human.’ – elsevier ‘Nobody has written so penetratingly about how a person can become lost because of religion.’ – sddeutsche zeitung
In My Father’s Garden by jan siebelink (b. 1938) was awarded the ako Literature Prize and was published in German (Arche Verlag / dtv), Italian (Marsilio Editori), Danish (Tiderne Skifter) and Portuguese (Cavalo de Ferro). A complete English translation is available. Siebelink’s previous novel, The Blue Night, was published in 2014.
Jan Siebelink Margje A son’s struggle to win his mother’s unconditional love Ruben Sievez, the son in Siebelink’s bestselling novel In My Father’s Garden, which sold more than 500.000 copies, is now an elderly man looking back on his life as he wanders through his Uncle Anton’s empty house. As a boy he found there, in the basement, an album containing a photo of his uncle with a younger woman. Ruben recognized her immediately as his mother Margje, who at that moment was upstairs drinking tea. All his life, Ruben has cherished an impossible dream about her. Did she perhaps love his younger brother Thomas, who rebelled against their religiously-obsessed father, more than she loved him? If only he could have taken his brother’s place. In Margje we return to the Sievez family, but this time the focus has shifted from the father, Hans, to other members of the family. In a spellbinding style, Siebelink depicts scenes from the eventful history of a family in which everyone tries to become someone else.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • Novel, 272 pages • November 2015 14
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Press on previous work: ‘She has great
powers of empathy and a fluid, vivid style.’ – nrc handelsblad
‘Drawing on her own experience or composing by instinct, however she does it, her fine writing makes the blood pound in all the arteries of the story.’ – eindhovens dagblad
inez van dullemen (b. 1925) received the Anna Bijns Prize in 1989 for her work as a whole, which consists of more than thirty books. She reached a wide readership with her chronicle The Past is Dead, for which she was awarded the Jan Campert Prize in 1976. The Country of Red and Black was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize 1994 and won her the Henriëtte Roland Holst Prize in 1996.
Inez van Dullemen The Two Rivers A playful and wise look back over her life by a ninety-year-old writer
Inez van Dullemen learned from Leonardo da Vinci to look at the flight of the birds in a different way. From that perspective she surveys the long stretch of time through which she has lived. ‘How I’d love to experience neareternity once more in my life, the freely breathing wilderness as it manifested itself in that far-off Alaska,’ she writes. From her sun lounge she undertakes a trip to the continents on which she has travelled, alights upon past work and then with the greatest of ease switches back to the birds in her garden. Inez van Dullemen is the author of a large oeuvre and this latest book is written in an enlightened prose that commands admiration but above all inspires.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • Novel, 156 pages • 2015 16
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Press on previous work: ‘What more can I say? Do I need to add that it teems with one-liners worthy of framing? A gem.’ – het parool ‘In ten years, ten exceptional poetry collections have appeared. Most of them are by Tonnus Oosterhoff.’ – nrc handelsblad ‘One of the most
important innovators in Dutch poetry since Lucebert.’ – de volkskrant
tonnus oosterhoff (b. 1953) is a poet, essayist and prose writer. His work is contrary and adventurous and has gained him a steadily growing circle of enthusiastic readers. He has won many prizes, from his debut with Farm Tiger, which earned him the C. Buddingh’ Prize 1990, to the P.C. Hooft Prize in 2012 for his oeuvre as a whole. His previous novel, The Big Heart (1994) was awarded the Multatuli Prize and translated into German. Since 2001 he has published his ‘moving poems’ on www.tonnusoosterhoff.nl, verses that change shape on the screen. 18
Tonnus Oosterhoff On the Skirt of the Universe A darkly shimmering mosaic of a story by literary prize winner Tonnus Oosterhoff
On the Skirt of the Universe is a tale about a vet called Roelof de Koning and the people around him. In thousands of strange but recognizable stories he describes the chaos that assails us, worldly and other-worldly at the same time. In the urgent, intoxicating structure of the litany, human, animal, language and plot undergo a continual metamorphosis. His poetry has been described as ‘soft- handed, hard-natured, comfort-poor’, and the same is true of this grandiose attempt to capture a multiplicity of simultaneous, pecu liar tales – the way the world really is – in a single story.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • Novel, 400 pages • 2015 19
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‘The trump card remains that subtle way of telling. Of not telling. Of making crucial observations at the right moment. Precisely what you need.’ – de volkskrant
‘Beautiful, unpretentious, sometimes dreamlike but that is simply very welcome.’ – vogue
Martijn Simons My Name is Julius The precarious balance that exists in a family and what happens if that dynamic is disturbed from outside
Skip and his brother David grow up in the same family, but they are as different as night and day. Whereas Skip seems more like his circumspect mother, David is a clone of his successful father. But when this father collapses on the golf course, it is Skip who returns from Curaçao to care for the unspeaking, paralyzed man. Back in the parental home, there is no escaping the past, when a girl entered the home and turned everything upside down, the girl who gave Skip his nickname. Where is she now? And what exactly happened just before she disappeared? martijn simons (b. 1985) studied Dutch language and culture. He made his debut in late 2009 with a short story in De Gids and in 2010 his first novel was published, Summer Sleep, which was enthusiastically received. Among other things, Simons writes a column for the Dutch newspaper volkskrant.nl. 20
My Name is Julius offers an insight into how precarious the balance in a family can be. In seemingly calm prose, Simons builds an intensified reality in which ultimately there is no escaping the truth – if the truth exists at all.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • Novel, 304 pages • 2015 21
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‘In intriguing short stories you plunge into a
bleak, sometimes perplexing world and get right under the skin of the characters.
An astonishing debut.’ – elle
frederik willem daem (b. Brussels, 1988) has published stories in Das Magazin, De Revisor, De Gids online and in the art magazine Oogst, of which he is co-founder and artistic director. For a monograph of artist Rinus Van De Velde his work was translated into German, English and French.
Frederik Willem Daem Even Birds Fall Story collection with a contemporary and pure new voice A police chase through the suburbs of Los Angeles, the privatization of a space station or a nocturnal ramble along the boulevards of Paris: Frederik Willem Daem’s supple imagination not only takes readers to the most remote corners of the world but above all brings them close to his characters. Despite the often dark subjects – he does not fight shy of death – Daem invariably allows a gleam of hope to show through in his stories. He carries the reader along with his excellent sense of control and structure, working out the dramatic storyline to the last detail. De Morgen noticed this a year ago when in its ‘the 14 promises of 2014’ it gave Daem responsibility for literature. This book is his disconcerting, funny and idiosyncratic debut. On every copy of the first print run of his debut, the author has written his name and the title by hand. That marathon signing session was streamed live on the internet and formed part of a short documentary.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • stories, 190 pages • 2015 22
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Press on What About Me:
‘Remarkable. … What About Me? is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what
is happening to us and why.’ – the guardian
‘A well-considered and fierce indictment of the rat race we call our lives and the toll it takes on us.’ – nrc handelsblad
Clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst paul verhaeghe is head of the psychoanalytical department at the University of Ghent. With his books Between Hysteria and Woman (1996) and On Being Normal and Other Disorders (2002) he gained international recognition as an expert on Freud and Lacan. He acquired a broad readership with Love in a Time of Loneliness (1998, updated 2011) and The End of Psychotherapy (2009), while The Effects on Identity of a Neoliberal Meritocracy won him a prize for the best essay of 2011 from Liberales. The American edition of On Being Normal and Other Disorders (2002) was awarded the Goethe Prize. His latest work What About Me? The struggle for identity in a market-based society was published in German, English, Chinese, Korean and Slovenian. 24
Paul Verhaeghe Authority An encouraging and much-needed appeal to give a new, modern interpretation to authority A great deal is going wrong these days when it comes to authority. Politics and religion have lost their credibility and parents can no longer control the behaviour of their children. In this book Paul Verhaeghe investigates how authority functions, why so little value is placed on it nowadays and what the alternative might be. Attempts to restore the authority of the past are destined to fail and they quickly degenerate into forms of pure power play. As a society we are at a crossroads, with power in one direction and new authority in the other. Verhaeghe seeks and finds a new interpretation in groups, which lend authority to an individual or an institution, whether they be parents’ associations, groups of active citizens or shareholders’ meetings. This shift is well un derway in childrearing and edu cation, politics and economics, and it is producing great results.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • English sample translation available non-fiction, 272 pages • 2015 25
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Translated by Brian Doyle Return (Darth Vader) or Change (Big Brother)? Traditional patriarchal authority has more or less disappeared, together with our voluntary subjection to a number of conventions that were once part and parcel thereof. The effects are tangible on every possible level (emergency doctors and ticket inspectors know all about it). The quest for a solution is in full swing and has resulted thus far in two radically different responses. The first response is a desperate attempt to return to the authority of yesteryear. This is doomed to failure because its foundations have disappeared. Power without authority, and thus with obligatory subjection, is on the rise in a number of sectors, including the economy, politics, education, and even healthcare. Our phobic concentration on Muslim terrorism is making us blind to an even greater threat that comes from within. The second response is the promise of a new authority. ‘New’ here stands for a different foundation and modus operandi when compared with patriarchy. It may sound surprising, but I have a strong sense that the new authority will represent a radical turnabout. Instead of being shaped and determined by some unique, lofty instance, it will find its foundation in a horizontal surface, a group. Darth Vader makes way for Big Brother. From Father of the Nation to the (not so) Ideal Son-in-Law Attempts to return to the former disposition are at their most striking in the world of politics. Every political party promises change, but once in power they insist that there’s no alternative. Politicians these days no longer look like fathers of the nation, but more like ideal sons-in-law who, after a while, turn out to be more interested in the family silver. Their failure is the failure of a superannuated system. When policy makers uphold this system nevertheless, a shift from authority to power occurs, with the accent on external control and compulsion. Political leaders reveal themselves to be rulers and are no longer the bearers of authority. Democracy seeps away on every said and dictatorial legislation increases – hence the ardent attempts of many politicians to justify what they are doing. Such justification can only be achieved by pointing to an external foundation, because that’s the way authority functions. The Church as the most important pillar supporting patriarchy is more or less finished and is now aware of the fact. A new foundation for authority should not, in terms of priority, be open to discussion; rather it should engender as much certainty as possible. 26
Politicians in the meantime have discovered the new foundation: numbers! In the present disposition, every exercise of power goes hand in hand with references to figures. The ideal son-in-law turns out to be an accountant. A complaining public is showered with statistics making it evident that the proposed decision is the only one possible. The vast majority of policy meetings begin with spreadsheets, which are, indeed, difficult to argue with. Numbers reflect cold, objective reality; they’re neither right nor left because they’re based on scientific research, at least that’s what the accompanying message informs us. Before I explore spreadsheets as the new source of authority, I would first like to focus attention on a twofold shift that takes place almost unnoticed when authority seeks its foundation in numbers. The first has to do with the person in authority: who is to designate the incarnation of the new authority? The second shift is even more important and has to do with the moral character of authority as such: which norms and values do the numbers represent? Gas Chambers, Gulags and Soup Kitchens The first shift is the easiest to demonstrate. Traditional authority has a clear chain of command, whereby the highest person in authority carries most of the responsibility. Every link in the chain is a representative of patriarchal authority and is accountable, in principle, to the person above him. The fact that accountability can fundamentally miscarry from time to time does not detract from the clearly identifiable character of authority figures. In such a system, resistance is always able to turn to someone known to be a bearer of authority (the manager, the senior physician, the rector, the cardinal). From the moment authority is based on statistics, the possibility of such focused resistance disappears. Numbers appear to live a life of their own inside digital bloodstreams based on inviolable algorithms. Every now and then they leave their subsoil and appear on a screen. Their manifestation engenders either enthusiasm or dismay among those who witness them, the latter, in both instances being nothing more than witnesses. There is little they can do. The required measures are already contained in the statistics themselves. Thinking out of box is inconceivable. You can’t dialogue with numbers, nor can you kick them out the door. Answering numbers with numbers means that one is turning within the same conceptual system. Authority is no longer incarnated in persons, it functions autonomously and anonymously. People these days can often be heard saying that ‘the system is to blame’. All we can do is bend to it. 27
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new literary non-fiction
Press on previous work: ‘With his A New Age of Empires Verhofstadt
has hijacked the European campaign. From now on his opponents will always have to say whether they agree with him on Europe. Or not.’ – de standaard ‘Guy Verhofstadt’s latest book, The Way Out of the Crisis, is more than worth reading. He offers the reader a clear insight into the why and how of the financial and economic crisis.’ – knack
From 1999 to 2008, guy verhofstadt was prime minister of Belgium. He is now a member of the European Parliament, where he leads the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (alde). In 2005 he wrote The United States of Europe, which was translated into twelve languages and awarded the inaugural European Book Prize in 2007. In 2009 it was followed by the publication of both his political essay A New Age of Empires and his book The Way out of the Crisis, in which he analyses the economic crisis and formulates a concrete solution. In 2012, along with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, he published the political pamphlet For Europe! 28
Guy Verhofstadt Europe’s Disease and the Rediscovery of the Ideal Europe’s Disease is an acute analysis of the (dis)functioning of the eu and a passionate plea for change Europe’s Disease is a no-holds-barred report on a once ambitious European project that has degenerated into an institutional quagmire. It includes a multitude of political anecdotes and personal stories that take the reader behind the scenes. Europe still imagines itself to be the moral centre of the world, yet our foreign policy is conspicuous for its cowar dice, the Mediterranean is developing into a migrants’ graveyard and we have yet to succeed in overcoming the economic crisis. The world looks at us with pity. ‘Piecemeal small-mindedness, in 28 national iterations,’ sneered The New York Times. Guy Verhofstadt sees a solution in a big leap forward in European integration. It need not result in the creation (en de herontdekking van het ideaal) of a superstate, but it does need to produce a more efficient and democratic Europe. He returns to the wise words of Europe’s founding fathers, brushing off and touching up the forgotten European constitution of 1952.
Guy Verhofstadt De ziekte van Europa
World rights: De Bezige Bij (except world English translation rights represented by The Wylie Agency) • English sample translation available • non-fiction, 286 pages • October 2015 29
de bezige bij
new literary non-fiction
‘In This is My Farm, De Stoop lifts a personal story up out of a boggy polder in Zeeland to a level that touches us all. … Born storyteller De Stoop joins a great and rich tradition of writers such as John Steinbeck, John Berger, Geert Mak and Frank Westerman.’ – de morgen
Chris de Stoop This is My Farm In this heartrending personal account, a centuries-old farming landscape vanishes before your eyes
Press on previous work: ‘An impressive book. Peace Be With You, Sister is so readable that it’s easy to forget this is non-fiction and not a novel.’ – **** nrc handelsblad ‘In America De Stoop would have earned himself a Pulitzer long ago.’ – de morgen
chris de stoop (b. 1958) is an author and a journalist for the Flemish weekly Knack. In 2004 he was awarded the Golden Owl Readers’ Prize for She Came from the East. In 2010 he wrote Peace Be With You, Sister, about the first Jihadists to leave for Syria and Iraq. With his debut They’re So Sweet, Sir (1992) he became the first to write the inside story of the international trafficking of women, a bombshell of a book that caused great commotion at home and abroad. 30
The Hedwige Polder, the most famous stretch of reclaimed land in the Belgian lowlands, is to be flooded again no matter what. It has become symbolic of old farmland forced to make way for new nature reserves. Nothing could touch the local population more deeply. Chris de Stoop, himself a farmer’s son from the area, returns to his parents’ farm, which is suddenly unoccupied. While running the farm, he looks at the changed landscape around him. He is the kind of person who can go into raptures over a comely cow, or wax lyrical about a freshly ploughed field. He looks back at the farming life that made the land what it has been for a thousand years. The disappearance of the farmer is a Europe-wide phenomenon, but nowhere is it as distressing as it is here. De Stoop watches the bulldozers advance, demo lishing centuries-old farmhouses to create ‘new nature’ as compensation for the expansion of industry.
World Rights: De Bezige Bij • English sample available • Non-fiction, 286 pages • 2015 31
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new literary non-fiction
‘After half a page in the new Frank Westerman I see it once more: this is the master himself at work.’ – trouw
‘Adroitly written reportage with a personal tinge, exhibiting much factual knowledge.’ – nrc handelsblad Press on Choke Valley: ‘A great book. Modern, urgent and suspenseful.’ – Laurent Binet (author of HhhH)
frank westerman (b. 1964) studied tropical agriculture at Wageningen University. In The Bridge over the Tara (1994) he described his experiences in the Balkans as a correspondent for de Volkskrant. He reconstructed the fall of Srebrenica for nrc Handelsblad, and the articles he wrote at the time were adapted and published in The Blackest Scenario (1997, with co-author Bart Rijs). Westerman’s other books include the bestsellers The Republic of Grain (1999), El Negro and Me (2004), which won him a Golden Owl, and Choke Valley (2013), which was shortlisted for the ako Literature Prize. His work has been published in sixteen languages. 32
Frank Westerman The Battle for Srebrenica The most penetrating Balkan reporting by Frank Westerman The Battle for Srebrenica has been awarded the Prinsjesboeken Prize 2015 for the best political book of the year July 1995. Serbian fighters murder thousands of Muslims from the Srebrenica enclave, a safe haven under the protection of Dutch blue helmets. What does Dutchbat do? It watches as men and women are separated, drives refugees out of its base and fills the diesel tanks of the vehicles in which Bosnian Muslims are deported. The battle for Srebrenica is not over yet. Crucial questions surrounding the fall of the enclave remain unanswered, relatives are still seeking recognition and justice, soldiers are struggling to come to terms with their trauma while their superiors are summoned to appear before a judge. Now, twenty years after the fall of the enclave, Westerman has brought together his most enduring and revealing work about the Balkans from his time as a correspondent. In the afterword he examines the lasting emotional damage done to the soul of the Dutch people by the events at Srebrenica. World Rights: De Bezige Bij • Non-fiction, 304 pages • 2015 33
thomas rap iris koppe (b. 1985) studied political science and Russian at the University of Amsterdam. She writes columns and articles for newspapers and magazines including nrc Handelsblad, Algemeen Dagblad, Het Parool and Hard Gras. She has published two novels with De Bezige Bij. In 2012 Koppe covered the European Championships in Ukraine for Algemeen Dagblad.
new literary non-fiction
Iris Koppe Lev Former professional footballer Levchenko balances on the fracture line between east and west, war and peace Evgeniy Levchenko (b. 1978) grew up in the Ukrainian Donetsk region, close to the spot where the airliner mh17 was brought down, in a time during which the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Young Evgeniy attended an elite Soviet school for sporting talents. At the age of sixteen he was invited to join Shakhtar Donetsk, but without his parents’ knowledge he took the train to the Russian capital where he signed a contract at cska Moscow. Not long after that he moved to Vitesse in the Netherlands, where his career in the Dutch premier division began. He has played for several Dutch clubs and gained eight caps for the Ukrainian natio nal eleven. He came to feel more and more at home in the Netherlands. Meanwhile his native country changed drastically. Accompanied by Iris Koppe, Levchenko returned there and together they tell a fascinating life story set in both East and West.
World rights except Russian and Ukrainian: De Bezige Bij non-fiction / memoir, 288 pages • October 2015 34
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quality extraordinary
Roland Sillem and Rutger Wilmink Dutch Masters A colouring book containing world-famous Dutch works of art, for the true art lover and colouring fanatic
roland sillem worked for many years as art director at a large advertising agency. In recent years he has concentrated more on his artistic work, creating paintings, drawings and book illustrations. Dutch Masters is an initiative of rutger wilmink, who works at De Bezige Bij and Thomas Rap.
The deep blue in Almond Blossom by Vincent van Gogh, the yellow ochre in the dress worn by Vermeer’s Milkmaid and the bright red of Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride: the Dutch masters are famous for their remarkable control of the interplay of light and shadow, but they were also masters in the use of colour. Artist Roland Sillem, along with Rutger Wilmink, has selected twentyfive major works by Dutch masters and turned them into pictures for colouring in. They are masterpieces known to us all, iconic paintings that Sillem has transformed into line drawings. All the paintings are accompanied by short descriptions in Dutch and English and depicted in colour so that we can either unashamedly copy them or give them a fresh interpretation.
World Rights: De Bezige Bij • Colouring book, 64 pages • November 2015 37
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quality extraordinary
Zaza The Zaza Engravings ‘I admit that nothing in my work is a patch on The Zaza Engravings. Downright enlightening!’ – Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
Ding Dong ‘Shall I get it?’
zaza is the pseudonym of Klaas Storme (b. 1967). His cartoons have appeared in many daily newspapers in the Netherlands and Belgium. He studied philosophy and theology at ku Leuven before beginning a career as a teacher of religious studies. His drawings and engravings have been published in De Morgen, Humo, Het Nieuwsblad and nrc Handelsblad. He was in-house cartoonist at De Standaard and now performs that function for Knack.
Picturesque and heart-warming old prints with hilarious commentary
For all those longing for more authenticity and a time in which women still wore hats and men real moustaches, there is now the perfect book: The Zaza Engravings. This first volume depicts a world of which we can never get enough. Impressions of household happiness are interspersed with moving images from nature. In chapters such as ‘Strikingly watering land animals’, the emotional lives of the fauna around us are brought to life. But the book also contains countless new insights into human behaviour, in chapters such as ‘War art’ and ‘Sexual intercourse’. There is no better introduction to the world of Zaza than this unique collection of real historical engravings, collected and provided with enlightening commentary by Zaza himself.
World Rights: De Bezige Bij • realistic cartoons for adults English sample available, 256 pages • 2013 39
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literary thrillers
‘Death’s Head Moth stands way out from the crowd and will give readers a taste for more of the same from this improbable writing duo.’ – ***** ad magazine
‘A captivating thriller – hard to put down, that’s for sure.’ – vn thriller- & detective gids ‘Anyone who doesn’t read this book this summer is missing something. Highly recommended, with all the best ingredients. It has a strong storyline full of surprises, it capitalizes on current affairs to an extraordinary degree and both authors use wonderfully expressive language.’ – entertainding
In his thrillers tomas ross (b. 1944) balances on the dividing line between fact and fiction. He has written more than forty books, winning the Gouden Strop Prize three times, and has worked as a scriptwriter on highly acclaimed Dutch television series and films. corine hartman (b. 1964) worked as a scriptwriter for many years and has fifteen thrillers to her name. Her books are famed for their tough action sequences and fascinating characters. She has been nominated for the Gouden Strop a number of times and has won several Crimezone Awards. 40
Ross & Hartman Death’s Head Moth A thought-provoking and ingeniously plotted thriller, an unique collaboration between two of the biggest selling Dutch crime-writers May 2015. A Dutch nato diplomat disappears on a secret mission and with him a butterfly guide with codes goes missing. The trail initially leads to the Italian Mafia and to Greece. nato chief director Charles Cavendish has more than thirty years of experience in the secret service and he decides to put together an unusual team: secret agent Adam Kaplan, who is trying to come to terms with the tragic death of his wife, and Carrie Montevagio, an inexperienced and spirited Sicilian who fled her native village years ago and has been in hiding in the Netherlands ever since. Her contacts with the Mafia could help her find the missing diplomat – but returning to Sicily will certainly put her life in danger.
World Rights: De Bezige Bij • Thriller • 356 pages • 2015 41
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literary thrillers
Winner of the Shadow Prize for the best Dutch debut thriller
René van Rijckevorsel Tunis Tunis is a terrifyingly realistic action thriller, based on real events
‘Exceptionally exciting and realistic thriller.’ – nbd biblion
‘Wonderful writing.’ **** – de telegraaf
ren van rijckevorsel (b. 1961) wrote his first novel, Tunis, while still working at Elsevier as one of the chief editors. He had earlier published Distant Friends, Letters Between Two Worlds (with Rik Kuethe; Thomas Rap, 1998) and Linguistic Appetizers. 126 Words from the Good Life (Elsevier Books, 2013). He studied Dutch language and literature at Utrecht University in the 1980s and has worked at Elsevier since 1994. In 1990 and 1991 he and his wife, a diplomat, lived in Tunis and from 1996 to 1999 in Harare, Zimbabwe. 42
On the last day of the Gulf War, 27 February 1991, forty-year-old senior diplomat Jan Willem Bouman is shot dead in Tunis. Twenty years later the murder has yet to be solved, to the fury of his former colleague Fiona Duijnwyck, who was one of the first to arrive at the murder scene. Then Fiona receives a mysterious phone call from brutal Tunisian ex-minister Abdallah Ben Yaya, with a tip-off about the murder. He is calling not from Tunisia but from a deportation centre for asylum seekers. When Fiona visits him, he is murdered and she is shot at. Despite her fear she decides to go back to dangerous, radicalized North Africa and finally discovers what happened the night Bouman was murdered.
World Rights: De Bezige Bij • Thriller • 320 pages • 2014 43
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successful titles
‘Characters who will steal your heart. … There are books that radiate self-confidence from the very first page, permeated with concentration, control and a kind of maturity. If we, for the moment, define good writing as getting readers where you want them, Sacrifice can only be called exemplary.’ **** – nrc handelsblad ‘A tale about benign but destructive love in a country of weakened souls. Van Beijnum portrays in poignant and historically accurate scenes a country finding it hard to bear a lost war.’ ***** – algemeen dagblad ‘The alternating storylines of Brink, Michiko and Hideiki are
well balanced, like a perfectly composed piece of music.’ **** – de telegraaf
kees van beijnum (b. 1954) is the author of successful novels including Poet on the Zeedijk, which was published in 1995 and nominated for the ako Literature Prize, while the movie based upon it won the Golden Calf – the Dutch equivalent of the Academy Awards. The Arrangement, published in 1998, was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize, and the film version was nominated for a Golden Calf. Oysters at Nam Kee appeared in 2000, was made into a movie and won the 2001 F. Bordewijk Prize. His most recent novels are Paradiso and Kind of Family which was nominated for the ako Literature Prize.
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Kees van Beijnum Sacrifice His love for a Japanese woman confronts a young judge with an impossible dilemma: should he remain true to his principles or break the law to save a life? Tokyo 1946. A year after the capitulation of Japan, the Tokyo Tribunal is well underway. Dutchman Rem Brink is one of the judges tasked with reaching a verdict on the most prominent of Japanese war criminals. To distract himself from his colleagues’ power games and continually changing alliances, Brink tries to get to know an unfamiliar and utterly destroyed country. When he meets Japanese soprano Michiko, who lost her parents during the bombing of Japan, a tender, secret love unfolds that turns out to bring dangers of its own. When their relationship is revealed, Michiko falls into disfavour with her Western benefactor. Her promising future lies in ruins and she leaves, pregnant, for her native village in the mountains. At that same isolated place, only a short time before, atrocious war crimes took place in secret.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • English sample available Rights sold: Bertelsmann (Germany) • Novel, 512 pages • 2014 45
de bezige bij
successful titles
‘Thinking Helps is refreshing. After reading Drost’s book I felt a lot better than before.’– trouw On The Romantic Fallacy: ‘An illuminating, erudite yet hopeful book. With his clear-sighted view, Jan Drost does love a great service.’ **** – de telegraaf ‘In a crystal-clear, measured style, Drost builds an argument for taking control of our thoughts on love, in order to arrive at a better, more realistic outcome.’ – nrc handelsblad
jan drost (b. 1975) is a writer and philosopher. He specializes in the philosophy of culture, and the philosophy of love in particular. He teaches at The School of Life Amsterdam and writes for nrc.next, nrc Handelsblad, de Volkskrant and Filosofie Magazine. He is the author of The Romantic Fallacy, now in its fourth printing.
Jan Drost Thinking Helps ‘The Dutch Alain de Botton est arrivé.’ – psychologie magazine Philosophy fuzzy? No, it’s not thin king about your life that’s fuzzy. Anyone who never asks him self the big questions lives randomly and can become hopelessly lost in emptiness and impotence. To be able to live a signi ficant and prosperous life we need to know what it is that gives our existence meaning and what can make us happy – or rather more modestly, less unhappy. Jan Drost investigates how to go about it, with the aid of thinkers including Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca, Spinoza and Sartre. Their thoughts and insights can help, not just with the big things like love, contentment, anxiety, life, death, sadness and grief but with smaller matters too, such as the question of why it always starts to rain as soon as you step out of your door. We can follow these philosophers in seeking our own path, our own inner freedom and, with a bit of luck, happiness. World rights: De Bezige Bij • English sample available • Rights sold: fltrp (China), Alchemist Books (Korea) • Non-fiction, Philosophy, 367 pages • 2015
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oog & blik
‘An overwhelming graphic novel … Majestic and compelling, with beautiful drawings and a cast-iron story. More of this, Aimée!’ ***** – veronica magazine ‘Beautifully drawn, realistic without being hyper realistic. Enchanting, with space for the imagination. Exactly what a good story should do. … Buy and read this splendid book.’ – het parool ‘With its balanced rhythm of two alternating storylines, a drawing style both sketchy and precise, attention to perspective and divergent framing, as well as a surprising plot, this is a thoroughly mature debut.’ – nrc handelsblad
successful titles
Aimée de Jongh The Return of the Honey Buzzard ‘Every day I ask myself: what would have happened if I’d intervened?’ Simon Antonisse is a book dealer in times of economic crisis who is forced to shut up shop because of poor sales. Tragedy strikes when he witnesses a suicide while out driving. It hits him like a bomb. Me mories from childhood trouble him more and more, and Simon’s life is gradually transformed into a turbulent dream. On ly Regina, a young girl he comes upon by chance, can give him the peace and love he longs for.
aimée de jongh (b. 1988) is regarded as one of the most talented of young Dutch graphic novelists. Ever since finishing her studies as an animator in 2011 she has worked full time as a comic strip artist, illustrator and animator for film and television. The Return of the Honey Buzzard is her first graphic novel.
World rights: Oog & Blik • Sample translations available • Rights sold: Dargaud (Belgium: French), SelfMadeHero (World English), Ponent Mon (Spanish), Komiko (Serbian) • Graphic novel, B&W, 160 pages • 2014 • Featured title in 10 Books from Holland (Dutch Foundation for Literature) 48
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successful titles
The Ice-Cream Makers A dazzling novel about an Italian ice-cream dynasty, tradition, ambition, and the sensation of lemon sorbet melting on your tongue
Giovanna’s navel
Mama Tandoori
Spiegel Bestseller
More than 100.000 copies sold in The Netherlands and Italy
In the far north of Italy lies the valley of the ice-cream makers: about a dozen villages where, for generations, people have specialized in making ice cream. Giuseppe Talamini claims it was actually invented here. Eldest son Giovanni Talamini decides to break with this tradition. But then one day his younger brother Luca approaches him with a highly unusual request. Now Giovanni faces a dilemma: serve the family’s interests one last time or choose his own path in life, once and for all.
July 1945, a hot summer’s day on the beach of San Cataldo, in the heel of Italy. Two brothers lie side by side, staring at the girls parading on the beach, firmly packed in swimsuits. Until the twenty-year-old Giovanna Berlucchi appears in the surf. In a two-piece swimming costume. For Ezio this is the beginning of a lifelong obsession.
The Van der Kwast family tree consists of a sturdy trunk, which splits into neat, straight branches and further on to a modest amount of twigs. But then the author’s Indian mother elbows her way into the family, armed with a rolling pin and two suitcases filled with mystery. This is the incredible and hilarious story of an outof- the-ordinary family, a story you have to read yourself to believe it.
‘Exceptionally beautiful novel that will convert even the most level-headed of sceptics to faith in true love.’ – elle
‘This is already the funniest and most moving book that I have read this year. Whoever was wondering where the Dutch Salman Rushdie was hiding, or even the Dutch Aravind Adiga, is given the answer with Mama Tandoori.’ – Herman Koch
‘Van der Kwast is simply magnificent when he describes the voluptuousness of pretty girls: you can feel the curves under your fingers. I want to sleep with all of these paper women. There are some truly moving scenes in The Ice-Cream Makers.’ – humo World rights: De Bezige Bij • English sample available • Rights sold: btb Verlag (Germany), Scribe Publications (World English) • Novel, 301 pages • 2015 50
Ernest van der Kwast
World rights: De Bezige Bij • Novella and 4 short stories, 160 pages Rights sold: isbn Edizioni (Italy), Mare Verlag (Germany), Scribe Publications (World English), btb Verlag (Germany) paperback • English sample translation available • Full German and Italian translation available
World rights: De Bezige Bij • Novel 244 pages, 2010 • Rights sold: isbn Edizioni (Italy), btb Verlag (Germany) • English sample translation available 51
thomas rap
successful titles
‘In the wonderful Under the Knife, Van de Laar describes the most famous operations and patients in the history of surgery. Without shunning medical terminology he delivers a readable narrative – spiked with a myriad of interesting details – of the diseases and injuries of famous people such as Bob Marley, Empress Sissi, Lenin, Queen Victoria, Einstein and President Kennedy.’ – nrc handelsblad ‘Van de Laar, a surgeon himself, has studied the surgical history of celebrated figures such as Albert Einstein and Louis xiv. He alternates his anecdotes with reflective questions: “What kind of people are surgeons actually? Where do they find the audacity to cut into another person’s body, even if under narcosis? Are surgeons crazy, brilliant or unscrupulous? Are they heroes or braggarts?” A well-written and informative work.’ – de volkskrant
arnold van de laar studied medicine in Leuven and currently works as a surgeon in the Slotervaart Hospital in Amsterdam. He regularly writes for the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Heelkunde. 52
Arnold van de Laar Under the Knife The entire history of surgery told in twenty-eight remarkable operations
‘Surgeon’ derives from the Greek for ‘hand work’, and since the dawn of time the surgeon has been charged with the task of patching people up when they need it. From the dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today’s sterile, high-tech operating theatres, surgeon Arnold van de Laar takes us on a journey through the wayward history of surgery. The patients that feature in his story are hardly ordinary: Empress Sissi (stabbed), Louis xiv (fistula in the anus), Pope John Paul ii (colostomy), John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald (gun shot wounds), Lenin (cerebral infarction), Houdini (ruptured appendix), Albert Einstein (aneurysm) and Bob Marley (melanoma under the toenail). Van de Laar uses medical case histories that fire the imagination to examine issues of the past, present and future. His tone is lucid and professional, and harsh reality is tempered by plenty of humour, making Under the Knife a rich medical and cultural history and a modern anatomy lesson for us all.
World rights: Thomas Rap • English sample available • Geman translation available Rights sold: Pattloch (Germany), John Murray (world English) Non-fiction, popular medicine, 414 pages • 2014 53
de bezige bij
successful titles
‘The political book of the year.’ – humo ‘Van Reybrouck lays a finger on the one-sided nature of our diploma democracy. In dazzling language he prompts us to think about many experimental attempts to break through defeatism and impasses. With his compelling advocacy of sortition, he succeeds in laying bare the wear and tear from which democracy is suffering.’**** – nrc handelsblad
‘Enlightening’. – de standaard ‘A real page-turner. He analyses the malaise of democracy cleverly and concisely, and puts forward solution.’ – denkwijzer
david van reybrouck (b. 1971) is a journalist, a literary non-fiction writer, a poet and a playwright. He made his debut in 2001 with the award-winning The Plague. His greatest success is Congo, a History, for which he received a slew of prizes including the Libris History Prize 2010, the Jan Greshoff Prize 2010 and the ako Literature Prize 2010. The book was also a runaway success in Germany, France and Norway and was translated into many languages. A Plea for Populism won him the Jan Hanlo Essay Prize 2009 and the Flemish Cultural Prize for Criticism and the Essay 2009. 54
David Van Reybrouck Against Elections An urgent call for reform that seeks to breathe new life into democracy
Our democracy is suffering from anorexia. Whereas it once fed on various forms of participation, these days it tries to survive on the thin gruel of a puny ritual: elections. We are neglecting our democracy at a time when the world is undergoing radical change. The traditional pillars of society are disappearing, people are better educated, information travels faster, the media have become much more commercial and social media are creating new forms of political awareness. All this demands more involvement, meaningful participation and greater transparency. David Van Reybrouck, who founded the successful citizens’ initiative g 1000 in Belgium, examines new ways of revitalizing our impotent democracy and involving citizens in everything that concerns us in society. Here he issues an urgent call for change.
World rights: De Bezige Bij • Political non-fiction • full English translation available soon, 174 pages, 2013 • Rights sold: Wallstein Verlag (Germany), Social Sciences Academic Press (China), Tiderne Skifer (Denmark), Actes Sud (France), Feltrinelli (Italy), Galapagos (Korea), Font Forlag (Norway), Deriva (Portugal) and Natur och Kultur (Sweden) 55
de bezige bij
preview 2016
de bezige bij at the frankfurt book fair 2015 Henk Pröpper Director/ Publisher Francien Schuursma Director Author Management and Communication WILLEM FREDERIK HERMANS
JOHN IRVING
STEFAN HERTMANS
AIMÉE DE JONGH
A.M. HOMES
RACHEL JOYCE
A.F.Th. van der Heijden The Hard Way
KHALED HOSSEINI
MIRANDA JULY
SIRI HUSTVEDT
LARS KEPLER
Daan Heerma van Voss The Last War
The relationship between advertising execu- A moving and evocative novel from one of KOPPE ARNOLD HARPER LEE DONNA LEON tiveIRIS Nico Dorlas, inVAN hisERNEST mid-forties, and DER KWAST VAN his DE LAAR the strongest literary voices of his generayounger girlfriend Désirée is about to blow tion. up in their faces. Dorlas’ incessant con- The life of Abel Kaplan, a history teacher sumption of drink and drugs, his violence approaching fifty, is defined by the Second and his separation anxiety, which verges on World War and its lessons in right and paranoia, form a deadly combination.MARCEL WhenMÖRINGwrong. TONI Caught between the two loves of his HELEN MACDONALD MARGRIET DE MOOR MORRISON ERWIN MORTIER Désirée leaves him, only one conclusion is life, his estranged wife and his girlfriend, he possible for Dorlas: she must die, and he’ll secretly decides to give shelter to a young go down with her – the contemporary versi- refugee. It´s the start of a quest for answers on of the romantic crime de passion. to the one question that has troubled him The Hard Way is a literary murder mystery all his life: how can someone who has never ofHARRY the MULISCH kind only A.F.Th. van der VLADIMIR HeijdenNABOKOV been putBERT toNATTER the test by war and its moral CHARLOTTE JO NESBØ MUTSAERS could write: rooted in Amsterdam reality, dilemmas know who he really is? but with universal scope; compact and at the same time profound.
Peter van der Zwaag p.van.der.zwaag@debezigebij.nl Editor-in-chief translated fiction De Bezige Bij and Oog & Blik
Katrijn van Hauwermeiren k.van.hauwermeiren@debezigebij.nl Editor-in-chief Flanders Melissa van der Wagt m.van.der.wagt@debezigebij.nl Publisher Cargo Marjolein Schurink m.schurink@debezigebij.nl Editor-in-chief Cargo
Marije de Bie m.de.bie@debezigebij.nl Editor translated fiction De Bezige Bij
Chris Kooi c.kooi@debezigebij.nl Editor Cargo
Haye Koningsveld h.koningsveld@debezigebij.nl Editor-in-chief De Bezige Bij non-fiction
Arend Hosman a.hosman@thomasrap.nl Editor-in-chief Thomas Rap
Jacques Schalken j.schalken@debezigebij.nl Editor De Bezige Bij non-fiction
Saartje Schwachöfer s.schwachofer@thomasrap.nl Editor Thomas Rap
Catharina Schilder c.schilder@debezigebij.nl Editor De Bezige Bij non-fiction
Marijke Nagtegaal m.nagtegaal@debezigebij.nl Foreign rights manager
Suzanne Holtzer s.holtzer@debezigebij.nl Editor-in-chief De Bezige Bij fiction
Uta Matten u.matten@debezigebij.nl Foreign rights manager
Van Miereveldstraat 1-3 | nl-1071 dw Amsterdam | P.O. Box 75184 | nl-1070 ad Amsterdam | The Netherlands | tel +31 20 305 98 10 | fax +31 20 305 98 24 For the latest (foreign) rights news, please visit us at our stand in Hall 5.0 d87
2016 • ca. 800 pages. • Fiction 58
January 2016 • ca. 330 pages. • Fiction
CEES NOOTEBOOM
TONNUS OOSTERHOFF
AMOS OZ
ORHAN PAMUK
JAMES PATTERSON
CESARE PAVESE
HAGAR PEETERS
KATJA PETROWSKAJA
YVES PETRY
THOMAS PIKETTY
MICHAEL PYE
GERARD REVE
DAVID VAN REYBROUCK
RENÉ VAN RIJCKEVORSEL
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM
ROSS & HARTMAN
PHILIP ROTH
OLIVER SACKS
JAMES SALTER
MARK SCHAEVERS
W.G. SEBALD
ROBERT SEETHALER
JAN SIEBELINK
GEORGES SIMENON
MARTIJN SIMONS
CHRIS DE STOOP
DONNA TARTT
PETER TERRIN
PAUL VERHAEGHE
GUY VERHOFSTADT
EDMUND DE WAAL
FRANK WESTERMAN
TOMMY WIERINGA
LEON DE WINTER