Foreign Rights Guide Frankfurt Book Fair 2019 by De Bezige Bij

Foreign Rights Guide Frankfurt Book Fair 2019

De Bezige Bij The Busy Bee Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find us in Hall 5.0 d87 (part of the collective Dutch stand)

Publishing house De Bezige Bij was set up illegally during World War II by a group of students in Utrecht who, led by Geert Lubberhuizen, financed their resistance activities under German occupation with a range of anti-occupation publications. After the war it moved to a building on the Van Miereveldstraat in Amsterdam as a cooperative publishing house, and soon became one of the leading and most successÂ ful literary publishing houses in the Netherlands. To this day De Bezige Bij operates from that very same building, now celebrating 75 years of literature and freedom.

DE BEZIGE BIJ, THOMAS RAP & CARGO

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FOREIGN RIGHTS GUIDE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR 2019

Alma Mathijsen Marcel Möring Ronald Giphart Kees van Beijnum Koen Peeters

NEW LITERARY FICTION I Don’t Want to Be a Dog ......................................................2 Amen ......................................................................................6 Time Enough ..........................................................................8 23 Seconds............................................................................12 A Room in Ostend ................................................................14

Harry Mulisch

MODERN CLASSICS The Elements ........................................................................16

Onno Blom Selma van de Perre Tommy Wieringa Peter Vermeersch Flip van Doorn & Jonah Kahn

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION Young Rembrandt: A Biography .........................................18 My Name is Selma ...............................................................24 Until It’s Passed ...................................................................26 Notes On a Murder ...............................................................28 How Many Tentacles Does an Octopus Have? ....................30

Donald Nolet Corine Hartman

NEW COMMERCIAL FICTION Hook .....................................................................................32 A Dark Path ..........................................................................34

Johan de Boose Peter Buwalda Tommy Wieringa

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION Cursed Wood ........................................................................36 Otmar’s Sons ........................................................................37 The Death of Murat Idrissi ...................................................38

Stefan Buijsman Lammert Kamphuis Bart Van Loo Annet Mooij Anuna De Wever & Kyra Gantois

Maarten Asscher

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION Pluses and Minuses ..............................................................39 Philosophy for an Inimitable Life ........................................40 The Burgundians ..................................................................41 The Age of Gisèle ................................................................42 The Climate Is Us .................................................................43 PREVIEW A House in England. A Grandson’s Novel ..........................44 1

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Excerpt: ‘Any changes?’ Gerard asks. By now I’ve got hair sprouting all over my body, my nails have turned black and pointy. The ground underfoot is already less painful to walk on. ‘ Look,’ I say, raising my left foot, ‘paw-pads coming on, right?’ Gerard puts his snout down to check. ‘Looks like it. This is your fourth day. I’m jealous, I must admit.’ ‘I won’t have to leave just yet, you know. I still have quite a lot to get done before I’m ready.’ ‘Last month there was a young lady here, only twenty-two years old, still had long blond hair when she arrived, within six days she’d transitioned into a golden retriever, and the day after that she was placed. Six days in all, just six days. I don’t want to dwell on it, or I’d get some very dark thoughts.’

ALMA MATHIJSEN (b. 1984) studied Image & Language at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and Creative Writing in New York. She is the author of six plays, a collection of short stories and three novels. Mathijsen also writes essays for the NRC Handelsblad.

NEW LITERARY FICTION

Alma Mathijsen

I Don’t Want to Be a Dog 0 0‘D’you want me to go now?’ you ask. No, don’ t go, do anything you like, but don’t go. ‘It’s up to you.’ Up to me again. That’s not what I want. I want you to stay, I want you to never leave, I want you to hold me and drink me up. ‘Maybe you should,’ I say, murdering everything as I say it. Heartbreak is all-encompassing, it thunders into our lives unannounced only to leave us cold and alone. But what if there is an escape from heartbreak? What if we don’t have to wallow in our own pain for months on end? If we don’t have to feel that desire for another anymore? If we no longer lie awake at night from the gnawing ache of missing them, if we no longer feel stabs of pain at seeing a couple in love? I Don’t Want to Be a Dog is a novella about a woman who decides to turn herself into a dog in order to be reunited with her ex-lover. She will be able to love him freely, whine when he leaves the room, snuggle up against him on the couch and growl at every intruder.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novella – 149 pages – 14 November 2019 – English sample translation available 3

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Excerpt I Don’t Want To Be a Dog “My snout is emerging. I felt it this morning. It’s my fourteenth day at the centre. I sleep late in the mornings, just as I planned to do. In the afternoon I try to get as much practice in as possible, I want to be fit for the reunitement. At night I walk with Gerard. He talks an awful lot about Elwin, and I talk about you. They still don’t know why it’s taking so long with Gerard. Sometimes I’m afraid his transition has stopped, but I’ll never mention that to him. My whole face feels different, my nose has turned quite black already, my mouth feels tight. It’s Sunday, which means we’re fed wet food. I’m not keen on that, but the other dogs love it. I like hot food, not the cold and wet kind. I’d rather have pellets, they don’t remind me so much of the food I miss so badly. I hope you’ll go on cooking for me. Whoever decided that dogs don’t like human food deserves to be punched. Gerard prefers eating when everyone else has finished, he doesn’t like seeing the others gorge themselves. He and I wait for the others to finish so we can eat in peace. ‘My arms were the first to change, but I still I haven’t got used to eating straight with my mouth,’ he says. The wet food in particular repels him, bits of it get stuck in the corners of his mouth, which are hard to get rid of without using your hands, and he always wants to look clean and tidy. ‘Gug going prackiss ee we gy gouth.’ Gerard gives me a worried look. Is this really happening already? I can’t pronounce the letters any more. ‘ Gug…’ The I has gone. ‘Gug prackiss ee gy gouth.’ 4

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The t and the m have also gone. I can’t get my tongue round the sounds any more. Tears well up in Gerard’s eyes. He’s about to lose his friend. I want to feel regret on his behalf, but what I feel is excitement. It’s going faster than I dared to hope. Maybe it’s because I’m younger than Gerard, he’s a bit overage for the programme, really, in fact he bought himself a place. ‘Can you still think straight?’ How can I tell, I wonder, but it looks like it. I still want to be with you, I know I was once a writer and that Gerard is my friend. I nod my head. ‘You already look different.’ Gerard looks at his food and then back at me. ‘It’s a nice snout, honestly.’ ‘Wog will gug be? Wog. Will. Gug. Be.’ I point to myself. ‘I don’t know, I don’t think you’ll be a pedigree. But that’s not what you were after, is it?’ A quiet border collie would suit me fine, if such a creature exists. Or your favourite of course, the Australian sheep dog, but that’s not on the cards. You mentioned mongrels, if I remember right. That’s it for you, it seems. A rough-haired, loving mongrel.”

Translated by Ina Rilke

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Press on previous work: ‘Marcel Möring is without a doubt one of the most

perceptive authors of our time and he has the greatest imagination.’ – The Times Literary Supplement ‘Möring’s prose is compelling and erudite, and he plays different registers with great ease.’ – Publishers Weekly

Excerpt: ‘The fact that there is a beginning that begins and an ending that ends and the end begins and the beginning ends and that the tide of time washes in and pulls out and leaves behind the wreckage of what was come on Saturday and get the last box, ok? and you saying that that’s ok, that everything’s ok, it’s ok that I don’t get it, it’s ok that the end begins here or the beginning ends here, there’s absolutely nothing that isn’t ok, ok doesn’t give a toss whether we get a move on or whether we don’t, because nothing ever changes, not between us, not the world, not history, everything flows and you can just look at and think: everything flows.’ MARCEL MÖRING’S (b. 1957) work has been widely translated and won numerous prizes. His first novel, Mendel (1990), was an instant success, winning the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize for Best Debut. The Great Longing (1992), which soon followed, won the country’s most prestigious prize, the AKO, while In Babylon (1997) won two Golden Owl Prizes, including the award for the best Dutch language book of 1998. In a Dark Wood (2006) won the Bordewijk Prize for the best Dutch novel. His previous novel, Eden (2017) received critical acclaim. 6

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Marcel MÖring

Amen ‘I’m a rabbit in your headlights, Joyce. But you don’t say that. Instead you say What do you want? and she says away from you. So.’ Samuel Hagenau works on the grounds of Westerbork, a WWII transit camp, as an archaeologist. On the day his wife announces that she will pick up the last of her things, he wanders into the forest to organise his thoughts. The discovery of a dead man sends him even further back to the question of who he was and who he is. Recurring themes in Marcel Möring’s work include the Jewish diaspora, uprooting, history, the search for identity and for a home. In Amen these subjects are interwoven in an astonishing and personal fashion. .

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Option publisher: Luchterhand (Germany) – Novel – 208 pages – 10 October 2019 - English sample translation available 7

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First praise: ‘Ronald Giphart surpasses himself with his new novel Time Enough.’- de Telegraaf Press on previous work: ‘Not just the composition

convinces. Also in terms of thought-provoking sentences, sharp observations and pithy phrases Giphart is better, more consistent and more impressive than in all of his previous work.’ **** Het Parool ‘Few write as convinced, as “religiously”, about romantic love as Ronald Giphart, while also paying attention to the eternal

complexity of it.’ **** NRC Handelsblad

RONALD GIPHART’S (b. 1965) debut novel I Do Too (1992) immediately established him as a bestselling author and was awarded the prize for the bestselling debut of the year. Thereafter he published many bestsellers, including the novels Phileine Says Sorry, I Embrace You with A Thousand Arms, Harem and Dear, just to name a few. Over one point four million copies of his books have been sold to date and three of his novels have been made into successful feature films. His novella Gala, published in 2003 as a gift for the annual Dutch Book Week, had a print run of 800.000 copies. His work has been translated into German, English, Greek, Indonesian, Italian and Korean.

NEW LITERARY FICTION

Ronald Giphart

Time Enough Six interwoven lives, six men get together one last time before selling their brewery

Their friendship began during the countless evenings spent in their favourite pub, evenings which never ended. They became addicted to the good life and the camaraderie. They didn’t know how or what, but just that something memorable would happen each day. When the six men decided to start a brewery in a cellar in Utrecht in the 90s, they became, besides friends, business partners. Twenty-five years later they are now headed to a cabin in the woods in Germany to spend one last weekend together, before they sign the contract to sell the brewery. Over the weekend they reflect on friendship, ambition, on life and love.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novel – 416 pages – 26 September 2019 – English sample translation available 9

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Excerpt Time Enough

On Friday evening, October 20, 1989 we stood outside, on the bridge close to the bar, in groups of varying makeup, looking at the drained canal and the people around it. The mood was agreeable, there were girls there too, every so often a tray of beer got brought out and the sounds of the city reverberated softly against the canal walls. But as the evening progressed, the temperature dropped. The warmth of the De Sidonia’s crowd beckoned, while others along the canal shoved off for somewhere else. Something kept us together, until we were left with the six of us. Jonas the actor. Lucien the body-slicer. Mike the draft dodger. Berend the bear. The last (for now) Cola. A guru named Gregor. Why it was that night and not another, why that troupe and not six arbitrary others: the chance that it could have turned out completely differently was infinitely greater than that our ‘sextumvirate’ would be created that night—our accidental sextet, the unspoken, unplanned and apparently random group that was as yet hardly a group. We stood together and drank beer, and, later, swigs of jenever from a bottle Gregor brought out from De Sidonia. We watched as nighthawks—despite the prohibition from patrolling policemen— clambered down the Oudegracht wall into the mud to dredge through what had been inaccessible for ten centuries. That evening in October went down in our personal history as ‘the night of the canal bed’. Our friendship began with the stinking, centuries-old muck of thousands of fellow city folk and ancestors.

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2019 Thirty years later, the world rushes past. Past! Past! We have stopped at the enormous Medenbach rest area along a German highway and are parked fraternally close together in a deserted corner of a huge parking lot, looking at the asphalt and listening to the Doppler effect, the high-pitched screech of oncoming traffic versus the lower-pitched grumble as it recedes into the distance. How’s that for a metaphor: the future screeches, the past grumbles. It is the first muggy spring day of the year, which, according to Jonas, is quite a contrast with our impending malheur. The word ‘malheur’ appears in his most recent play, so now he regularly uses it himself. Our destination is Lessebach, about a hundred kilometers further; this parking lot is the regular foraging spot in the woods. Lucien has brought elaborate sandwiches, and just to be on the safe side he picked up some greasy German snacks at the gas station further up. In the old days we’d have travelled together, but now, for the first time, we’re each in our own car. Back in the day, we would cram into our rickety van: Berend at the wheel, a stream of whisky that went from mouth to mouth, Cola buried in a collection of poetry, Mike and Berend debating countless subjects, Jonas with a guitar in his lap and Lucien in back on a mattress, catching up on sleep after a mattressless night shift. At the beginning of our friendship there was, of course, a kind of exchangeability. It is a romantic idea to think that friendship has nothing to do with age or background, but in the real world, people become friends because they are of a similar ilk, are about the same age, and live close by. We satisfied these three criteria. As time goes by, we have become less similar.

Translated by Jonathan Reeder 11

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Press on previous work:

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 ‘The alternating storylines are well balanced, like a

perfectly composed piece of music.’ **** – de Telegraaf

KEES VAN BEIJNUM (b. 1954) is the author of successful novels such as Poet on the Zeedijk, Oysters at Nam Kee, which won him the F. Bordewijk Prize and Kind of Family which was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize. His three most recent titles are Sacrifice, The Beautiful Season and 23 Seconds.

NEW LITERARY FICTION

Kees van Beijnum

23 Seconds ‘Just as my mother used to suppress the fact that a man lay on top of her in the room below, in the attic above I blocked out the thought that she lay under a man. Those were our positions. And we never spoke of them. Never’. A young writer named Anne returns to Amsterdam’s Red Light District twenty years after the notorious ‘hammer murder’ of her mother, a window prostitute born and raised in the city. She’s been given an advance by her publisher to write about her extraordinary childhood. Anne’s search for the roots of her existence raises more questions about her mother’s murder than it answers. Determined to unravel the mystery, she descends deeper and deeper into the dark world of her past. When she tries to contact the murderer, the consequences are explosive. The mystery’s unravelling is cleverly interwoven with the riveting story of a photographer named Hayo, Anne’s young love before he died. 23 Seconds will grip readers right through to its stunning conclusion. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novel – 412 pages – 12 November 2019 – English sample translation available 13

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Praise:

compositional ingenuity with which book was assembled is stunning.’ - **** de Morgen ‘The

this

‘A great

wealth of always wonderfully worded stories about human experience, the inevitability of

growing older and giving way to new generations.’ - Tzum ‘In his new novel Room in Ostend Koen Peeters goes in search of a lost time and he highlights the magic of encounters. He shares

that magic with us, wandering through the city.

[…] Room in Ostend has coloured my vision. Warped it.

Deepened it. Everywhere in the city the book glints like late afternoon sunlight on water.’ - de Standaard KOEN PEETERS (b. 1959) is the author of a rich, award-winning oeuvre. His novel The Postman won the NCR Prize while Great European Novel was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize and translated into various languages. In 2010, The Flowers won the F. Bordewijk Prize, and A Thousand Hills won the E. du Perron prize in 2013. His previous novel The People Healer won the Confituur Booksellers prize, the ECI Literature Prize and the ECI Readers Prize.

NEW LITERARY FICTION

Koen Peeters

A Room in Ostend How friendship helps us dealing with grief and saying goodbye Nominated for the Bookspot Prize A writer and a painter. For years they have met one another in Ostend, where they both once found the love of their lives. They walk through the City, with her reckless talent for tourism, famous artists and the silver North Sea. They meet one another in hotels, stroll, get lost among the city’s inhabitants. They linger in the company of fishermen, Congolese immigrants, tragic architects, writers, painters and women. The writer and the painter are curious, sometimes intrusive, but never rude. In rare, precious, melancholic moments during their encounters they discover how to see through the other’s eyes. Even deep into the past.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novel – 272 pages - June 2019 – English sample translation available 15

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Praise for The Elements: ‘The most important thing remains the plot, the

wonderful story, the adventure novel. The myth comes first, then the moral. In order to achieve that effect a combination of self-control and fantasy is required. A sense of

restraint and a sense of abandon. Harry Mulisch seems to possess both.’ NRC- Handelsblad ‘The Elements is a novel like a magic

spell.’ Tzum

Praise for The Assault: ‘A dark

fable about design and accident, strength and weakness, and the ways in which guilt and innocence can overlap and intermingle.’ – New York Times HARRY MULISCH (1927-2010) wrote novels, stories and essays that won him countless literary prizes and honours. Part of the literary universe he left has been published in more than thirty-six languages.

MODERN CLASSIC

Harry Mulisch

The Elements Mulisch’s unforgettable novel about a family holiday on the island of Crete Recently turned forty, ‘Art Director’ Dick Bender is on holiday with his wife, daughter and son on Crete. He stays in the villa of one of his clients and they lead a normal holiday life there. Doing groceries in the village, lying on the beach. His elevenyear-old daughter is difficult, his nine-year-old son stubborn. There is the boredom that sets in toward a holiday’s end: it’s still too early to pack bags, yet the desire to return home begins to gnaw. Nevertheless, an astounding confluence of circumstances awaits him—one that will make even world news.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novella – 144 pages – November 2019 17

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‘As the author of two big books on Rembrandt and a number of small ones, I nonetheless find myself wishing to be able to delve more deeply into various aspects of his work and life. That starts with his early life in Leiden, his family, his school, local lore, the people who encouraged him and bought his earliest paintings and etchings. Because the documentary evidence is so sparse, it takes intimate familiarity with the Leiden surroundings, a good historical imagination and a certain literary daringness to do justice to this important theme. So I was delighted to hear that Onno Blom, who is richly endowed with all three prerequisites, is taking on the job. I am looking forward eagerly to a book that will evoke Rembrandt’s beginnings in full color.’ GARY D. SCHWARTZ, AUTHOR OF REMBRANDT’S UNIVERSE

‘I know Blom to be an ambitious researcher and a gifted writer. His way with words, his experience as a biographer and his understanding of art and the city of Leiden make him the ideal candidate to write the biography of the young Rembrandt. I declare myself willing to advise him on his subject matter where appropriate, considering my long experience with Rembrandt's artistic career and oeuvre.' PRF. ERNST VAN DE WETERING, REMBRANDT RESEARCH PROJECT

(b. 1969) graduated cum laude in Dutch literature and Cultural Studies. He is a writer, journalist, columnist for de Volkskrant and literary critic for de Nieuwsshow on Radio 1. His previous books include His Book of Hours (about Harry Mulisch), The Mythological Creature Named Komrij, That’ll Do (about Jan Wolker’s last year) and, most recently, the critically acclaimed national bestseller Death’s Scar: The Jan Wolkers Biography in 2017. ONNO BLOM

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Onno Blom

Young Rembrandt A biography An immersive exploration of the mystery of young Rembrandt’s early years

001

Rembrandt’s life has always been an enigma. How did a miller’s son from a provincial Dutch town become the greatest artist in the world? With his formative years shrouded in mystery, the only remaining evidence of Rembrandt’s life as a young man is his work. Deeply rooted in the turbulent changes that his hometown was undergoing, Rembrandt’s early paintings tell a fascinating story of artistic evolution against the backdrop of the widening horizons of Leiden’s cultural and commercial life during the Dutch Golden Age. Leiden’s fortune facilitated Rembrandt’s. But who was that young man inventing himself as the city around him grew and prospered? How did Rembrandt become Rembrandt? To find out, Onno Blom immersed himself in the world, the country, the city and the house in which Rembrandt was born in 1606 and where he spent the first twenty-five years of his life. The result is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young man, rich in local and biographical detail, and restless in its efforts to seek out the roots of his genius. World rights: De Bezige Bij. Rights sold: Pushkin Press (UK and ANZ) – Biography – 277 pages, full color illustrations –– 5 September 2019 –– ‘Young Rembrandt, Rising Star’ exhibition in Lakenhal in Leiden, The Netherlands (2 November 2019 – 9 February 2020), ‘Young Rembrandt’ exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England (27 February 2020 – 7 June 2020) – tv-documentary series (VPRO) to be broadcasted in the Netherlands from 28 September – Full English translation available

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Excerpt Young Rembrandt

Prologue

WHERE TO BEGIN? IT HAD TO BE WEDDESTEEG I pulled the door shut behind me and walked into town, keeping the tower of the town hall ahead of me. The seventeenth-century stepgables glittered in the sunlight. After the bluestone in the middle of the surface of Breestraat, the crossing that marked the point where medieval Leiden was divided into four parts, I walked faster and with a lighter step because the street gradually slopes downward towards Noordeinde. There I turned right into the narrow passage. Darkness. Only above my head glittered the brightness of blue sky. On the left the high wall of an old army barracks, farther on, to the right, a plaque in the faĂ§ade of a monstrous block of flats commemorated an event of many centuries ago: HERE was born on 15th July 1606 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN With the approach of the three-hundredth anniversary of Rembrandtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birth, a few mutterings sounded here and there among the people of Leiden. In Amsterdam, where the painter settled at 20

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twenty-five years of age to accumulate riches and fame, the magnificent house on the street then known as SintAnthonisbreestraat, where he lived and worked from 1639 to 1658, was purchased by the local council. It was restored and converted into a museum. Since then, the Rembrandt House has attracted hordes of tourists each year. Nothing of the kind happened in Leiden. In 1906, a committee of erudite scholars descended upon the house of Rembrandt’s birth. In the gloomy grime of this alley, the elegant gentlemen came upon a derelict stable. A soiled postcard of the interior survives from that era. It shows a crumbling tiled wall and a charred hearth. A reporter from the local daily newspaper Leidsch Dagblad pocketed the card and went to have a look for himself on 17th May 1906. He was admitted by a stable-hand. On the ground floor was stationed a gleaming, jet-black carriage, “a new-fangled coach with the air of a well-fed parvenu”. The journalist then proceeded to climb the stairs and had the sense of entering a haunted house. “The entire little room is full of shrouds from hearses, dangling from poles like mourning banners.” The committee had a modest plaque attached to the façade, but for the rest it rather pooh-poohed the house where the city’s most famous son had been born. With the passage of time, all the buildings in Weddesteeg passed into the hands of the printing firm Nederlandsche Rotogravure, which demolished the house in 1927. For a brief moment, Leiden showed signs of regret. In 1963, a 21

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sham Golden Age façade was erected where the house had once stood: just a wall with nothing behind it. The printing firm had plans to reconstruct the interior behind the fake façade. It purchased seventeenth-century items of furniture and stored them in the municipal museum, De Lakenhal. The plans fizzled out.

In 1980, Rotogravure went out of business and the fake façade was torn down again—along with all the buildings in Weddesteeg. Only the 1906 plaque was salvaged and later bricked into the outer wall of the new block of flats. Embarrassingly, the most recent meticulous research in the city archives reveals that even the plaque is in the wrong place: it should have been ten metres farther down the

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

road. For that was where Rembrandt van Rijn was actually born. In a place that had vanished from the world. When I arrived at the spot, I saw two foreign tourists pointing at the plaque and nodding excitedly. To me, the scene had an air of tragicomedy about it. Several metres in front of me, a young man on foot wearing a wide-brimmed black hat crossed the bridge over Galgewater and disappeared from sight. Where was Rembrandt? Not here.

If I try to remember when and where I first stood face to face with Rembrandt, I hear the creaking boards of an old wooden floor. I must have been about seven, holding my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand on the threshold of the Large Press in the Lakenhal, the dark upper gallery of the Leiden museum, where the syndics inspected cloth samples in the seventeenth century. As I step inside, the wide oak floorboards sound as if they are cracking under my weight. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like stepping onto thin ice that might give way at any moment. It was in the Lakenhal that I saw my first Rembrandt: the 1626 Leiden History Painting, a jam-packed theatrical scene the subject of which is still not known today. It includes a cameo of the young Rembrandt, peering out from behind the sceptre of an imperial figure. Eyes in the dark and a head of wild curls, which he scratched into the wet paint using the back of his brush. From across the centuries, he met my gaze.

Translation by Beverley Jackson 23

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Excerpt:

‘While I was still half visible the Aufseherin came over and she said I had to hurry up. She pulled me along outside by my arm and ordered me to follow the others to the train station. This slight delay nevertheless worked in my favour because I was pushed into the last wagon, where there still weren’t that many women seated. The other wagons were bursting and the poor women inside, including my friends from the camp, Wil, Thea and Gusta, travelled for two days in terrible conditions. In my wagon there were twelve, fourteen or so women, none of whom I knew. Many of them turned out to be prostitutes who had been imprisoned so that they could be treated for venereal diseases. They had been working in the kitchen and had managed to haul a large suitcase with bread and sausage and a drum of thick soup on board. To me that seemed a great stroke of luck; I knew the other wagons wouldn’t have these provisions. But these women didn’t seem to appreciate how fortunate they were, they began bickering about the food.’ SELMA VAN DE PERRE (b. 1922) was a member of the Dutch resistance organization TD Group during WWII. Shortly after the war she moved to London, where she worked for the BBC and met her future husband, the Belgian journalist Hugo van de Perre. For a number of years she also worked as foreign correspondent for a Dutch television station. In 1983 Selma van de Perre received the Dutch Resistance Commemoration Cross. She lives in London and has a son.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Selma van de Perre

My name is Selma She loses just about everything: her parents, her sister, her name, her identity. The memoires of a 97-year-old Ravensbrück survivor. She was seventeen when WWII broke out. Until then, being Jewish had never played a large role in her life, however it suddenly became a question of life or death. Though she was summoned to register for a work camp in 1942, she managed to evade it. She joined the resistance: under the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit, Marga for short, she forged documents and delivered them throughout the entire country. She escaped the Nazis on multiple occasions, but in July of 1944 she was betrayed and transported via Camp Vught to Ravensbrück. Unlike her sister and parents, she survived the horrors of the camp. During that time no one knew that she was Jewish, and no one knew her real name. It was only after the war that she dared say it again: My name is Selma. .

World rights: Thomas Rap – Memoir – 256 pages – January 2020 – English sample translation available

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Press on previous work: ‘His master

hand has bested itself again’. – Algemeen Dagblad

‘Fiction at its most precise and potent.’ – The Observer ‘Beautiful, concise, taut.’ - BBC Radio 4 Structurally sound and highly intelligent. Wieringa will make you think and keep you reading eagerly to the final page.’ - Times Literary Supplement ‘What Wieringa does best is people; with a few cherry-picked words he creates a townful of wholly believable, empathetic characters ... I can't recommend this profound,

thoughtful, truthful book enough. - Big Issue TOMMY WIERINGA (b. 1967) is the author of, among other books, Joe Speedboat (F. Bordewijk Award), Little Ceasar (shortlist International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), These Are the Names (Libris Literature Award), The Death of Murat Idrissi (nominated for the Man Booker International Prize) , The Blessed Rita (both Jury and Readers’ Bookspot Literature Prize) and This is My Mother. His work is praised worldwide and translated in over twenty countries.

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Tommy Wieringa

Until it’s Passed 00

Children, a source of immeasurable love On a Friday morning in the early days of the most beautiful month of the year, Tommy Wierina became a father for the second time. The birth of his daughters changed everything: his view of the world, his sense of happiness. When a child is born you should be, in the first place, a man and father, but when Wieringa found himself behind his work bureau at 6 AM the next morning, he discovered that he will always remain a writer. ‘Not from a sense of responsibility, but because I was awake and had nothing else to do.’ Fatherhood brings the writer wonderful observations and stories, and a new assignment: ‘Look, look well, you say to yourself, forget your fuss and the nonsense, it’ll soon have passed.’ For this book Tommy Wieringa selected his most beautiful short stories about his children’s youth, a period in time that is over before you know it.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Many option publishers – Columns – 25 November 2019 – 64 pages – English sample translation available 27

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Praise: ‘Vermeersch surpasses

himself with Notes on a Murder: the book is an enormously gripping call to think very deeply about how we handle criminals and victims.’ - Mark Schaevers ‘A rare combination of beauty

and engagement.’

– David Van Reybrouck, Author Excerpt: ‘Outside, three boys charge around the corner, shoulders high, quick silhouettes. Behind the windows of the other flats in the lane it is still a normal evening. Potatoes are boiled and tables decked, night falls after several hours. The late-night news shows images of protests in Cairo, barricades somewhere in Thailand and cyclocross racing in Koksijde. In the flat where the light stays on, a woman once lived. She won’t be found until several days later.’ PETER VERMEERSCH (b. 1972) is a professor of social science and politics and a writer of literary non-fiction. He publishes essays, prose and poetry in, among other publications, De Correspondent and McSweeney’s. His previous work, Ex: About a Country Gone Missing, was nominated for the Bob den Uyl Prize, the Golden Owl Prize and the E. du Perron Prize. In 2016 he was awarded the Humanities Prize by the province of WestFlanders.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Peter Vermeersch

Notes On a Murder How do you discover the meaning of justice, guilt and punishment today in a murder trial?

One morning Peter Vermeersch receives a letter summoning him for jury service—the Belgian judiciary system is no stranger to trial by jury, though it hasn’t been used for a long time. The charge against the young man is robberymurder. Before he knows it, Vermeersch finds himself sitting in the Palace of Justice in Brussels. Along with the other jury members, he must deal with questions about the facts of the murder, the rituals of the judiciary system and a skittish creature of a suspect. What does it feel like to be a victim, or the bereaved? What do you do to someone when you punish them? Does it help?

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Literary non-fiction – 336 pages – August 2019

THOMAS RAP

Praise: ‘Flip van Doorn and Jonah Kahn have turned the collection of useless facts into an art

form.’ AD Magazine

‘The question of whether useless knowledge has any use leads sooner or later to the question of whether knowledge has any use at all. Those who aren’t careful will then quickly land at

the essence of life. It’s then wiser to read a colorful catalogue of useless knowledge, which is relaxing and might even conjure a smile on your lips. In these stressed out times that itself is already useful.’ Trouw Letter & Geest

FLIP VAN DOORN (b. 1967) has previously published The First Hiker and A Fictive Kingdom at Thomas Rap. JONAH KAHN (b. 1971) works as a copy editor at the daily newspaper Trouw. The authors are members of the Trouw-bound Dutch Association for the Promotion and Dissemination of Useless Knowledge.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Flip van Doorn & Jonah Kahn

How Many Tentacles Does An Octopus Have? The great book of useless knowledge The importance of useless knowledge can hardly be overstated. Bellybutton fuzz migrates upward; the longest marathon took fifty-four years, eight months, six days, thirtytwo minutes and twenty seconds; and the first motorist in history was a woman. These are fascinating morsels we can turn to when we want to escape a world that relentlessly bombards us with serious information. Useless knowledge doesn’t just come in handy during a pub quiz, game of Trivia or game show. It offers us a look under the hood of society. This wonderful collection of such facts says more about humanity than many dissertations. And at the end of the day isn’t all knowledge useless?

World rights: Thomas Rap – Popular science, short essays– 336 pages – August 2019 – English sample translation available 31

CARGO

Praise: 'Even more so than in his previous books, Nolet reveals his

talent for crafting mood in Hook.' – de Telegraaf 'With his latest book Hook, Dutch thriller writer Donald Nolet captivates

readers

once again.' - Thrillzone ‘After an acclaimed debut, Donald Nolet returns with an

addictive thriller. The Devil’s Handwriting is of a calibre to match the work of Dan Brown.’**** – De Volkskrant

‘Intelligent summer thriller full of clues, inscriptions and secret locations.’ – Zin

DONALD NOLET (1975) studied Japanese culture and language. Since graduating he has worked as an advertising copywriter. In 2014 he won both the Golden Noose and the Shadow Prize for best thriller with his debut Encrypted. In 2017 his thriller about the mysterious Voynich manuscript, Handwriting of the Devil, was shortlisted for the Golden Noose award and it has been published in Germany by Droemer Knaur.

NEW COMMERCIAL FICTION

Donald Nolet

Hook A stunning thriller about professional kickboxers and the ruthless world of organized crime Alexander ‘Hook’ Holman is a living legend in the kickboxing world; as a gifted trainer he’s led many fighters to the top. At the same time, Holman has been the right-hand man of André Krook, one of the last godfathers of the Amsterdam underworld, for years. The close friendship between these childhood friends comes under strain when a Syrian refugee walks into the boxing gym. The boy is the greatest talent that Holman has ever had under his wing, but his protégé’s meteoric rise pushes the trainer into the spotlight. The carefully maintained balance between his two lives begins to teeter, and the consequences are fatal.

World rights: Cargo – Thriller – May 2019 – 336 pages – English synopsis available

CARGO

Praise: ‘Faye van Laar is an intriguing main character who immediately finds her way into

your heart.’ **** ½

Thrillzone ‘An interesting and suspenseful book in which

unexpected events quickly follow each other up. With great dialogues. A well thought out plot with a surprising conclusion. Recommended.’ - NBD ‘A remarkable

main character of whom we

haven’t seen the last.’ - Algemeen Dagblad ‘Corine Hartman is a big

name in the Dutch thriller

world.’ - De Telegraaf

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.

NEW COMMERCIAL FICTION

Corine Hartman

A Dark Path 1

Where does the boundary between delusion and reality lie? Faye van Laar has lived in a psychiatric institution since childhood. Her father is the director, but she is also a patient, and together with five other patients she forms an unusual family. New to the family is Emilie, who suffers from paranoiac delusions since her boyfriend Steven was murdered. The perpetrators are now after her, she insists. Faye wants to believe her, she knows how it is to live with uncertainty, and tries to help Emilie by starting her own investigation. She meets detective Simon te Bresser, who can’t drop the case regardless of the conclusion that Steven committed suicide under the influence of antidepressants. When Emilie suddenly vanishes without a trace, Faye and Simon team up to form an unlikely investigative duo.

World rights: Cargo – Novel – 336 pages – May 2019 35

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Johan De Boose Cursed Wood Shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize The miraculous journey of an extraordinary piece of wood across two thousand years of history ‘A Great Russian writer lurks in the soul of Johan de Boose. The plot of Cursed Wood is as hilarious as it is brilliant.’ Stefan Hertmans, Author

A piece of wood from a tree in Palestine was used to crucify the prophet Yeshua. The wood turns out to have magical powers: it can talk and it arouses exceptional desire in anyone who touches it. When a theatre director takes it to support his stage set, a spectacular journey begins. The piece of wood finds its way to the Roman emperor, Orthodox monks, the Russian tsar, Islamic scholars, inventors, the pope, fascists and communists, painters, scientists and terrorists. Along the way it encounters famous toenails, shrouds and foreskins. The journey lasts more than two thousand years. With the wood as a witness, Johan de Boose takes the reader on a journey past the most dramatic events of European history. The fact that the wood has certain reservations about everything adds an appealing, ironic touch. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: btb-Verlag/Luchterhand (Germany) Novel – 214 pages – September 2018 – English sample translation available

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Peter Buwalda Otmar’s Sons Buwalda’s breath-taking masterpiece 120,000 copies sold in the first six months Shortlisted for the Bookspot Prize ‘Incredibly gripping, technically superb and intriguing. A narrative treasure.’***** – NRC Handelsblad ‘A 1001 nights of reading pleasure. In grandiose, rich and imaginative language. Otmar’s Sons is intelligent, timeless, tantalising, witty and addictive.’***** De Standaard Irresistible. Morbid issues described in a cheerful, boyish and bold style; that contradiction is what makes Otmar’s Sons by Peter Buwalda a masterpiece.’ – De Groene Amsterdammer Otmar’s Sons tells the story of a young Shell employee named Ludwig Smit, who, after visiting the illustrious Johan Tromp on the Siberian island of Sakhalin, finds himself stranded there during a snow storm. It’s at that very moment, when investigative journalist Isabele Orthel hands Tromp the lid to a Pandora’s box, that his sensational career in the oil industry begins to teeter. Tromp – hedonist, alpha male, Shell’s crown prince and in all regards Ludwig’s exact opposite – misjudges his two visitors entirely. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Trilogy: Rowohlt (Germany), Actes Sud (France). Otmar’s Sons: Cappelen Damm (Norway), Politikens Forlag (Denmark) – Novel – 605 pages – March 2019 – English sample translation available – Selected by the Dutch Foundation for Literature as one of the 10 Books from Holland 37

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Tommy Wieringa The Death of Murat Idrissi Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 ‘A savagely effective little novel … A nasty masterpiece of narrative tension; it’s brutally spare.’ Evening Standard

The ferry from Tangier to Algeciras, a fierce wind blows through the Gibraltar Strait. In the hold of the ship, hidden in a car boot, a young man dies. Soon afterwards, two young Moroccan-Dutch women enter Spain with the dead stowaway in their car. The land stretches out before them, vast and empty. On either side of the asphalt lies the desert. What started as a light-hearted adventure has now become their fate. In 2004 Tommy Wieringa attended a court case where he took down the account which forms the basis for The Death of Murat Idrissi. Hundreds of anonymous corpses are found every year along the Spanish motorways, belonging to those who have failed to survive the journey over. The Death of Murat Idrissi describes the fate of one of them, as well as that of two daughters of migrants, who feel like foreigners, both in their parents’ home country and in the Netherlands. World rights: De Bezige Bij. Publisher: Hollands Diep – Rights sold: Scribe (UK, ANZ), Gyldendal Norsk (Norway), Actes Sud (France), Iperborea (Italy), Random House Literatura (Spain). Alef (Turkey). Novel - 126 pages - March 2017 – full English translation available

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION

Stefan Buijsman Pluses and Minuses The use of math when you never calculate anything ‘Stefan Buijsman is Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, but with much better social skills, a man of immeasurable capacities and way intelligence.’ Svenska Dagbladet

above

average

Thousands of years ago the inhabitants of Mesopotamia became the first to use numbers. Since then, mathematics has been unstoppable. It’s behind almost everything, from search engines to cruise control, from coffee-makers to timetables. But now that we hardly ever need to do arithmetic any longer, how relevant is mathematics to everyday life? Pluses and Minuses demonstrates which role mathematics plays in the human endeavour. It begins with the mathematical skills we all possess from birth and arrives at the many applications of mathematics today. It turns out that if we don’t understand the ideas behind those applications we find ourselves side-lined in situations where they don’t work as we want them to. Buijsman answers questions such as: What is life like without numbers? Does mathematics add anything? How important are integrals? Is the usefulness of mathematics mere chance? How can we get a grip on uncertainty? Can mathematics help us to treat cancer more effectively? Stefan Buijsman makes connections between philosophy, psychology and history, while explaining the wonderful world of mathematics for absolutely everyone .

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Natur och Kultur (Sweden), Penguin (USA), Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK), Text (ANZ), Beck (Germany), Vuibert (France), Alianza (Spain), Ponte alle grazie (Italy), Libri (Hungary), ZNAK (Poland), Domingo (Turkey), Woongjin ThinkBig (South-Korea), United Sky (China), China Times (Taiwan), NHK (Japan) – Popular science – 201 pages – October 2018 – Full English and German translation available 39

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Lammert Kamphuis Philosophy for an Inimitable Life A playful philosophy for a better relationship with yourself, your fellow humans and the world There is no rehearsal for life. You only get one go. Fortunately you can consult great thinkers for wise advice. Diogenes helps you to be your authentic self, Epicurus to avoid spending too much money, Kant to brake in time for a zebra crossing – but less well-known philosophers have something to offer as well. Lammert Kamphuis shows how thinkers both ancient and modern can assist you. From the moment you realize that life is not all roses, all kinds of questions flash through your mind: Where do I find myself? Who am I really? Who are these other people? Why are they all staring at me and what do they think of me? What is expected of me? Why am I here? And will someone tell me, please, when this is going to stop? Philosophy for an Inimitable Life offers comfort, enriches friendships, creates understanding for those who think differently and enables you to take more pleasure in your work. You’ll be amazed at how accessible this way of philosophizing is – and ready to try it for yourself.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Aufbau (Germany) – Popular psychology, philosophy – June 2018 – 236 pages – English sample translation available 40

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION

Bart Van Loo The Burgundians 110,000 copies sold Shortlisted for the Libris History Prize Nominated for the Bookspot Prize Bart Van Loo takes the reader on a journey through a thousand years of European history, calling at cities including Dijon, Paris, Lille, Ghent, Bruges and Delft, up to the time when the Seventeen Provinces arose and the Burgundian Empire came to an end. He is unmatched in his ability to bring the powerfully evocative middle ages to life. His quest takes him to the emergence of the Dutch nation in the fifteenth century, and it turns out that the Low Countries were a Burgundian invention. The Burgundians is a whirlwind of a cultural history, an astonishing account of emerging cities, awakening individual-ism and dying knightly ideals, of schizophrenic kings, bold dukes and brilliant artists. While the Burgundian dukes forged the fragmented Low Countries into a unified whole through battles, marriages and reforms, they spurred artists like Klaas Sluter, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden to produce unforgettable works. Along the way, Bart Van Loo’s equally thrilling and educational exploration of the middle ages develops into an impressive cultural history.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Head of Zeus (World English, PRE-EMPT), C.H. Beck (Germany, PRE-EMPT), Flammarion (France) – History – 608 pages, including footnotes, chronology, bibliography, maps, and two full-colour inserts – January 2019 English sample translation and synopsis available 41

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Annet Mooij The Age of Gisèle A revealing book about a dynamic artist’s life and the power of myth Shortlisted for the Libris History Prize Nominated for the Bookspot Prize How did the liberated painter mange to survive in the misogynistic society of Castrum Peregrini? Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht (1912-2013), daughter of an Austrian baroness and an Amsterdam patrician, divided her youth between Catholic boarding schools and a castle with seventy rooms. This beginning would prove to be the springboard for a multifaceted artist’s career and a life full of friendships and romances. She married Amsterdam’s ex-mayor Arnold d’Ailly and threw her lot in with the mysterious German poet Wolfgang Frommel and his crowd of young friends, to whom she offered shelter in her small Amsterdam apartment during the Nazi occupation. After the war, this gave rise to an exclusive house enshrouded in secrecy, ‘Castrum Peregrini’: Gisele’s own canal house family. Gisele succeeded in presenting her life as a fairy tale. But what did the reality behind the elegant façade actually look like? In The Age of Gisèle, Annet Mooij reconstructs her dynamic and fascinating life with an exceptional eye for detail. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Büchergilde Gutenberg (Germany) – Biography – 480 pages – September 2018 42

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Anuna De Wever & Kyra Gantois The Climate Is Us

A letter to everyone

They started with two. Sitting at the kitchen table, Anuna and Kyra shared their concerns about the climate and decided: enough was enough. On 10 January, in a city square designated by the police, Belgian students organized a protest against the current climate policy. There was not enough space for the 3000 students who showed up. A week later there were 12,500, the week thereafter: 35,000. Anuna and Kyra quickly became the faces of a protest generation that will no longer let itself be dismissed by politicians with reassuring words. In The Climate Is Us two young climate activists reach out a hand to each of us: to politicians and policy makers, to parents and grandparents, and to their peers. They’re naïve, as they put it themselves. But here that just means: unavoidable, just like the future, as the clock ticks on. For every euro this book earns, De Bezige Bij will donate half to Youth for Climate.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Editions Stock (France), Alianza (Spain), Solferino Libri (Italy), Spartacus (Norway), Straarup (Denmark) – Manifesto – 72 pages – March 2019 – Full French, Spanish, and Italian translation available

PREVIEW

Maarten Asscher A House in England A Grandson’s Novel This novel evokes the magic world of an unforgettable house. It is also a disturbing reflection on the damage that unavoidably occurs when things are salvaged from the past To cure his persistent insomnia, the narrator of A House in England imagines nocturnal walks through the house of his grandparents in a quiet London suburb. In that house, in Kew, near the famed botanic gardens, he used to spend his yearly summer holidays in the 60’s as a boy, being the eldest grandson. His grandparents were always bickering over trifles in their nevertheless indestructible marriage. Although of Jewish descent, they miraculously survived persecution in Nazi-occupied Holland, together with their three children. After the war, in 1947, they suddenly moved to England. During his nightly walks, the rooms, the paintings, the beautiful garden and his grandparents come alive. But brooding at night over his memories and rummaging through family papers by day, the narrator gradually realises that his grandparents’ survival of the war in Holland came at a price. This is a sad element in the whole story, a proverbial snake in the paradise. With 17 books to his name, MAARTEN ASSCHER (b. 1957) is a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction and a translator of poetry. An earlier novel and various of his novellas were published in German translation. A collection of his essays appeared in the US. A House in England is his first book with De Bezige Bij. World rights exc. Germany: De Bezige Bij (German rights: Agentur Petra Eggers) – Novel 272 pages – February 2020 - English sample and synopsis available 44

      

Mark Beumer Director De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo

Francien Schuursma Publisher De Bezige Bij

Arend Hosman Publisher Thomas Rap

Marjolein Schurink Publisher Cargo

Katrijn Van Hauwermeiren Editor-in-chief fiction De Bezige Bij

Haye Koningsveld Editor-in-chief non-fiction De Bezige Bij

Peter van der Zwaag Editor-in-chief translated fiction De Bezige Bij

Chris Kooi Editor De Bezige Bij; Cargo

Saartje Schwachöfer Editor Thomas Rap

Merijn Hollestelle Editor fiction De Bezige Bij

Mariska Kortie Editor non-fiction De Bezige Bij

Catharina Schilder, Editor, Thomas Rap

Erik Dasselaar Manager Sales and Marketing De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo

Marijke Nagtegaal Senior rights manager De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo

Uta Matten Rights manager De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo

Noora Lamers Digital product marketeer De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo

THO MA S RA P

C ARG O