Foreign Rights Guide Frankfurt Book Fair 2022 De Bezige Bij, Thomas Rap, Cargo

DeBezigeBij TheBusyBee

NEW LITERARY FICTION

LITERARY

Nieuwdorp

Dekker

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‘When the lights dim, Willem appears gradually, as if from a mist, an effect possibly designed to soften any shock. He looks considerably younger than he was when he died. From the collar of his shirt and the cut of his hair she can tell which photos they have used to create the animated head. A smaller head. Occasionally, his eyes blink in rapid succession, a feminine touch.’

Praise for The Event:

‘

He impresses with the precision of his sentences, reminiscent of James Salter, the American master stylist.’

De Tijd

The Event is not only a paean to love, but also a paean to literature itself.’

Humo

PETER TERRIN (b. 1968) is an author and photographer. He won the prestigious AKO Literature Prize in 2012 for his novel Post Mortem. Both The Guard (2009) and Monte Carlo (2014) were shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize. In 2016 he published Yucca, which was shortlisted for the ECI Literature Prize. All the Blue (2021) was highly acclaimed and awarded the Confituur Bookseller Prize 2022. Peter Terrin’s work has been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German and Japanese.

Peter Terrin

The Event

About the untameable power of love and the inevitability of loss

Juliette is a single, middle aged woman, the faithful personal assistant of Willem, an elderly writer who has lost his eyesight and dictates his novels to her. He achieves his greatest literary successes at the very end of his career. When Willem passes away, his young wife Femke challenges his will, which stipulates that Juliette is not only to receive his fabled collection of first editions, but also a memory stick which likely contains the revealing writings he dictated at the end of his life.

The Event is a playful and richly layered book, with subtly interwoven stories that read like chapters from the final novel that Juliette and her beloved Willem were writing together separated by death, but united in their prose.

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Novel

224 pages

August 2022 English sample translation available

Featured by Flanders Literature

Excerpt from The Animals:

All I’m saying is, it seems to me things were going wrong with Tom Keller already when those two uncles of his took him out in the woods at night and had him do things a nine year old boy has no business doing yet. His father, Frank, couldn’t have approved either. But I don’t think Frank knew, in fact, even if he wasn’t behind bars yet, not back then. But he was going to find out soon enough, he was going to find out what we were all going to find out: Johan and Charles took that poor kid out with them on the longest night of winter, in that stinky, rattletrap Volvo of theirs with a length of wire strung between the wheels, racing that thing like all get out down the frozen dirt roads, and then they had that boy, their own kin, their nephew, walk back from the end of the track to scrape the decapitated rabbits off the ground.

Those two didn’t even look back. They were in a foul mood, they were; the animals were skittish that night, a storm was blowing in. The warm funk in the Volvo had to have stunk of full-strength tobacco and sweat, and of the brace of dead hares, polecats and pheasants they’d already dressed and laid out on the rear shelf.

GIJS WILBRINK (b. 1984) is an author, musician and founder of a podcast platform, a music blog and a literary fanzine. The Animals is his debut.

Gijs Wilbrink The Animals

A fantastic hybrid of Breaking Bad and Joe Speedboat

Tom Keller belongs to the most notorious family in a region filled with poachers, mink farms and other shady enterprises. He grows up in this milieu full of secrets, blessed with a prodigious talent for motocross. When, as a grown man, he suddenly goes missing, his rebellious daughter returns to the home turf she was so eager to leave behind in search of him, culminating in a family reunion that takes a dramatic turn.

‘If only he’d done just that oh, if only he’d wrung their necks, then that would have been the end of that, and then everyone would have been spared the whole unholy mess later on and then maybe no one would have ever had to tell this story. But they found him, in the beam of the motorcycle lamp, amid the thistles and stinging nettles at the side of the road, shaking and bawling just the way you’d expect a nine year old kid to do in a fix like that.’

Excerpt from Antiboy:

There’s no logical moment in which to casually drop my news and I almost let it sink away again. We have to be brave and not only tell our exes. So I say it, I say I might be non binary. Silence at the other end.

‘What do you think about that?’

Again he starts talking about his tiger print slippers and his cold feet and I keep asking questions so that the conversation doesn’t stall. Is it Spaghetti Bolognese? Yes, with minced meat. How many pages has he written today? Seven, me too, I say, about a bodybuilder who flexes his muscles and wears a pink tank top and… The memory of the mirror is still fading like a dream forgotten upon awakening.

‘Would you please say something about it?’ I ask. ‘I’m not angry with you, ’ he says and hangs up.

VALENTIJN HOOGENKAMP (b. 1986) debuted in 2021 to great critical acclaim with the novel Adoring Louis Claus, which will be published in 2023 by Atlantik/Campus Verlag in Germany. Furthermore he has written works of theatre and performed poetry at cultural festivals such as Lowlands, Parade and Oerol. His work has been awarded the El Hizjra Literature Prize, nominated for the ITs RO Theatre Award and selected for Women Playwrights International Stockholm and Interplay Europe Madrid.

Valentijn Hoogenkamp

Antiboy

A moving coming of gender tale

'To be honest, I had no words for it. There was an emptiness there, the feeling I was missing something others had. I didn't feel connected to my gender; it felt like something I put on every morning, not something that reinforced my identity.'

Interview in Volkskrant Magazine

When, as a result of a genetic mutation, Antiboy discovers he has to undergo a mastectomy, he realizes: now I no longer have to live as a woman. This causes confusion on the part of his doctors, friends, family and partner. Has he always felt this longing? It provokes harsh confrontations with the past and with his loved ones, who are unable to let go of the person they thought they knew. Surrounded by loss and mourning, Antiboy goes in search of hope and the meaning of being oneself. Antiboy is a provocative and lyrical tale of loss and of finding freedom in transformation.

Bezige

Excerpt from The Shadow of a Friend:

“I’m absolutely convinced you have some newsworthy things to tell me, and that those have to do with Xavier Wiegers. As you know, I’m working on an article about what I consider to be the highly questionable views advanced by that politician, with whom you have been friends for the last forty years. Those views frequently lie at the very limits of propriety, or even cross those limits, when it comes to the position of migrants, political refugees and minorities in general. He incessantly makes discriminatory and racist pronouncements, promotes false and misleading claims about the EU as a democratic system, he throws doubt upon the nonpartisan nature of the Dutch judicial system…”

“But now you ’ re conflating…” Van Lynden started.

“Perhaps you’ll allow me to finish my thought, then I’ll be delighted to hear your reaction,” she cut in quickly, then went on right away (...) I’m sure you have an opinion about that, don’t you?” Kyra placed her notepad conspicuously on the table in front of her, and beside it the ballpoint pen she had taken from her bag.

With eighteen 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 have been translated into German. In 2019, Asscher received the J.H. Donner Prize, awarded every five years, for his exceptional contribution to Dutch letters. The Shadow of a Friend is his third novel.

Maarten Asscher

The Shadow of a Friend

About the strength and vulnerability of friendship

A young investigative journalist is working on a feature article that takes a critical look at right wing politician Xavier Wiegers. As part of her research, she wants to interview his college friends, all of whom belong to a small, but still tightly knit secret society called Honey Ball. To her frustration, the circle of friends completely freezes her out. However, it does become apparent that Wiegers’ friends take issue with his political views. On the eve of the society’s forty-year anniversary celebration, the question is not whether the friendships will suffer so much as just how bad the fallout is going to be.

The Shadow of a Friend is a novel about moral dilemmas you don’t realize you ’ re dealing with until they’ve become unsolvable, and about a defiant young woman who decides to go up against five ‘old boys’.

excl.

Praise for Heidelberg:

‘This is compelling, apt and engaging storytelling. An entertaining, gripping, expansive novel with multiple perspectives, many different storylines and one single, straightforward premise that ends up bringing all of those threads together.’

NRC Handelsblad

‘Simons’ sharp gaze is conveyed in lucid prose that seems plain, but on closer inspection turns out to be full of original turns of phrase and wry humor.’

Het Parool

'From different perspectives a family drama slowly unfolds. This turn of events is inevitable, which makes it all the more tragic. A touching story. '

Zin Magazine

MARTIJN SIMONS (b. 1985) is a writer and teaches Dutch. His published novels include Summer Sleep (2010) and My Name is Julius (2015). Together with Casper Vandeputte he wrote the novel Destiny (2019) under the collaborative pen name Simon Caspers. His previous novel, The Dutch Dream (2020), was awarded the BNG Literature Prize.

Martijn Simons Heidelberg

A gripping story about a family brought together by grief

The Wagenaars used to be a picture perfect family. With good jobs, a stable home and an affordable mortgage, Willem and Annet were living the dream and their three boys seemed destined for great futures. Now Willem, Annet, Micha and Ruben are traveling to Heidelberg, Germany, where Ruben is to be awarded his doctorate. Following the ceremony, they will be scattering the ashes of their eldest son, Cas. During the trip, it becomes apparent that they are each looking for their own way to come to terms with this huge loss—and that their individual lives have actually been in a state of crisis for quite some time.

Heidelberg is a confronting novel about grief and strained family ties.

World rights: Thomas Rap

Novel

477 pages

May 2022 English sample translation available

Praise for Will:

‘The Times historical fiction book of 2019: A brilliant, uncomfortable exploration of the moral compromises necessary to live alongside evil.’

The Times

‘Jeroen Olyslaegers’ great strength here is to look into dark times and find ever darker corners to show his readers, revealing the doublethink and double dealing that occupation gives rise to. (…) He bravely explores moral compromise, betrayal and collaboration and throws our polarised times into sharp relief. ’

The Guardian

'Jeroen Olyslaegers has done it: his Big Book. He has written his Sorrow of Belgium, his Chapel Road and above all his very own Will. '

Standaard

JEROEN OLYSLAEGERS (b. 1967) is a Flemish author, playwright and columnist. His novels are lauded for their stylistic control, expressive style and narrative strength. Will (2016) won four major prizes in the Netherlands and Flanders and was translated into eight languages. The film 'Will', directed by Tim Mielants, will be launched next year.

Jeroen Olyslaegers Willem and My Lust

Olyslaegers skillfully builds a bridge between the 16th and 19th centuries

In the year 1885, Hippolyte van Damme steals a number of old letters from an antiquarian bookseller. It turns out they are letters written by Willem Silvius, a prisoner and former publisher, to his wife at the height of the Protestant iconoclastic riots of the 16th century. As a writer of gossipy newspaper supplements constantly in search of sensationalist material, Hippolyte is convinced that he’s struck gold. But it turns out he is badly mistaken, and before long the consequences of this petty crime wreak havoc in his life.

In Willem and My Lust, Olyslaegers draws readers into this tragicomic life characterized by lust, theft and an obsession with books, while teaching us something about what men think they know about women.

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Praise for Mr. and Mrs. God:

'A symphony of memory, in which individual recollections and fantasies at turns clash and effortlessly meld. And yet each story has its own distinct form and tone and is written from a different perspective (...) Margriet de Moor has the eye of a painter and writes like a composer. ’

**** de Volkskrant

This is De Moor’s great strength: her boundless imagination and her ability to empathize deeply with her characters’ dreams, desires and decisive moments, even if they inhabit a distant past.’

Elsevier

MARGRIET DE MOOR (b. 1941) made her debut in 1988 with the short story collection Seen from Behind. It was followed by successful novels including First Grey, Then White, Then Blue, which won her the AKO Literature Prize in 1992. De Moor was trained as a musician at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and has written several novels about music, including The Virtuoso and Kreutzer Sonata. Other well known works include The Painter and the Girl, Mélodie d’Amour and Of Birds and People.

Margriet de Moor Mr. and Mrs. God

Heartfelt stories about love, mourning and motherhood

Joseph Haydn in his final hours, Judith in the act of decapitating Holofernes, sultry summers in this deft collection of short stories, Margriet de Moor takes readers on a journey through historical and personal moments. From Amsterdam to Israel, from Vienna to the countryside, into the past and back to the present, all while exploring huge themes such as love, being a parent and death. Each tale is told in De Moor’s distinctive assured, playful voice. In one story, for example, Mr. and Mrs. God discuss the future of mankind from up in heaven:

Late in the evening, once the reading light had been turned off, God said to his wife, ‘I’m not happy.’ She rolled over onto her side, put her hand on his stomach, thought: oh no, not again, and said soothingly, ‘Try to get some sleep ’

Excerpt from Small Faltering Flights:

He stands at the kitchen counter looking out. There’s a crack in the window. She’s still not back. He washes his hands, sprays the kitchen sink clean.

How much time to kill?

He counts the hours.

Seven hours later, still nothing. He straps his daughter into a sling and heads outside.

His senses are heightened, he notices everything with an uncanny clarity—

her keys on the hook doormat at a slight angle a stray sheep far from the rest of the flock a footprint on the gate flies on blades of grass a desiccated mole hanging off the barbed wire a shoe beside the path (not hers)

FEMKE BROCKHUS (b. 1989) studied Modern Dutch Literature and teaches Dutch at a high school. Her debut novel, Let It Be Quiet, was published in 2017 to great critical acclaim and longlisted for the ANV Debut Novel Prize. Small Faltering Flights is her second novel.

Femke Brockhus

Small Faltering Flights

'A beautiful, poetic novel. With all her pointed comparisons, Brockhus fulfills an elementary function of literature: to articulate the unspeakable.' ***** - NRC Handelsblad

An architect and his wife, a writer, move to a remote location, a house on the edge of an old hamlet for which he designed a new village centre. She is hoping to be able to write there and create something extraordinary. But before long the silence and isolation begin to get to her. She becomes more and more absent minded, withdraws from the world—and then vanishes without a trace, leaving him behind with their small daughter.

Femke Brockhus vividly describes the life of this young couple, one which always had cracks in its foundations. Small Faltering Flights is about being a parent, dealing with loss and the all too human yearning to disappear. A book that quietly sweeps you away.

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Novel

166 pages

August 2022 English sample translation available

Chapter 10

Old and cast aside. The beginning of the end

Eternal life

Everyone as old as Father Christmas?

The hypothalamus as the clock of life

Stem cells, hormones and the ageing process

Your biological age: healthy ageing

Sleep (not so) tight

Physical activity

About people and their smell

Digestion and appetite: compliments to the hormones

The big clean up

The first immortal woman

Quid pro quo

What can you do yourself?

‘Max Nieuwdorp gives a lucid and persuasive account of the impact of our hormones throughout every stage of life.’

– Zin Magazine

MAX NIEUWDORP (b. 1977) is an internist and endocrinologist, professor and head of department at Amsterdam UMC. He has also worked as a visiting scientist at the University of California, San Diego. His current research focuses on the interplay between the role of hormones, the digestive tract and its inhabitants, and people’s health.

Max Nieuwdorp

We Are Our Hormones

The power of hormones throughout all stages of life

Our hormones play a major role in many areas of everyday life. They are responsible for our development in puberty, they are critical for a successful pregnancy and play a primary role in the aging process. Over the past seventy years, scientific understanding of how hormones exert influence over our bodies has increased exponentially. At the same time, many aspects remain underexplored, such as the major impact of gut bacteria on our hormone balance, the changes the female body goes through in menopause and the decline in male hormones during andropause.

This fascinating book, inspired by Nieuwdorp’s day to day interaction with his patients, describes the power of hormones in all areas in detail and in an accessible style.

World rights: De Bezige Bij • Rights sold: Hoffmann und Campe (Germany)

Popular science • 352 pages • September 2022 • English sample translation available • Features in Dutch Non Fiction of the Dutch Foundation for Literature

Praise for The Ascent:

‘

The Ascent can be read as the life story of a collaborator. A masterful storyteller, Hertmans sketches in an assured style what is first and foremost a fascinating family portrait.’

De Tijd

‘Hertmans is at times the cool chronicler, then at others the savvy novelist who etches events onto our retinas with a nonchalant bravura, a skilled storyteller who knows nearly every trick of the trade.’

De Morgen

STEFAN HERTMANS (b. 1951) is the author of novels, story collections, essays and poetry. His work has won many awards, including the Multatuli Prize, the F. Bordewijk Prize, and the AKO Literature Prize. His novel War and Turpentine was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2017. War and Turpentine sold 250,000 copies and has been published in twenty four languages. His novel The Convert garnered praise from all uarters. It was published in 2016 and won he E. du Perron Prize in 2017. In 2019 ertmans won the Constantijn Huygens Prize or his body of work. Publishing house Gallimard (France) has recently brought out ertmans’ latest novel The Ascent alongside ollections of both his essays and his poetry.

Stefan Hertmans Shifts

What can you say about your own time?

If there is one line that’s been reverberating in Stefan Hertmans’ mind for years, it’s Victor Klemperer’s famous quote, written with a steady hand in his famous journals during the Nazi period, amid terror and uncertainty: ‘The contemporary witness knows nothing.’ There is one thing that we do know: this is a time of transition to something we ’ re only just beginning to understand. We are all eyewitnesses, though we ’ re only partially aware of exactly what it is we ’ re a witness to to our current reality and the shifts we feel every day without knowing exactly what they will amount to. In these ruminations, as erudite as they are sensitive, Stefan Hertmans undertakes the challenge of trying to capture something of this zeitgeist, of pinning down the things that tend to elude our grasp in the chaos of day to day life.

Praise for Putting Yourself First:

‘In a carefully-argued essay, Van Iperen describes how shared values such as equal opportunities and social mobility have gradually given way to an approach to life that she sums up as “putting yourself first.”’

Het Financieele Dagblad

‘This is the most important insight from the book: let go of your prejudice and ask yourself why a certain group of people is worried and afraid.’

– De Correspondent

‘Van Iperen lucidly describes the key role of women in the normalization of extreme right-wing views (...) A razor-sharp pamphlet. ’

Binnenlands Bestuur

ROXANE VAN IPEREN (b. 1976) is a writer, publicist and lawyer. Her previous books include Scum of the Earth, The High Nest (which has sold more than 200,000 copies and was published in fourteen different countries) and Letters to the High Nest. In 2021 she wrote The Genocide Fax, a book length essay commissioned for Dutch Book Week, and gave the Fourth of May lecture on National Remembrance Day, the annual observance in honour of those who lost their lives during World War II.

Roxane van Iperen

Putting Yourself First

How the Middle Class Lost Its Liberal Values

For many years, the Netherlands’ self image was characterized by openness and tolerance. This stemmed from the post war optimism of the middle classes, who believed in equal opportunities and in the importance of a social safety net to ensure each generation would have an easier life than the one before it.

Over the past few years people’s faith in progress has crumbled. Under the influence of the political sphere, it has given way to a strong urge toward self preservation, resulting in the rise of extreme views and beliefs. In Putting Yourself First, Roxane van Iperen compellingly shows how this came about and expresses the hope that the middle class will once again embrace the notion of progress.

Praise:

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

‘Marion Koopmans does not shy away from difficult questions and brings the debate [surrounding the Covid 19 pandemic] back to the scientific facts. With infectious enthusiasm, she is able time and time again to separate opinion from what we actually know about the virus, and does so in clear and understandable language.'

Jury Statement, Iris Medal Juryrapport Irispenning

MARION KOOPMANS (b. 1956) is a professor of virology at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam and a leading researcher in the field of infectious diseases. She is a member of the Dutch Outbreak Management Team and advises the World Health Organization on its response to emerging outbreaks. She has been deeply involved in efforts to contain various outbreaks, including of Ebola and Zika virus. In 2021, she received the Iris Medal for excellence in scientific communication.

MISCHA HUIJSMANS (b. 1993) is an artist and a student of anthropology and sociology. He lives in London.

‘A world leader in the study of viral transmission.’

Marion Koopmans

A Virologist in a Changing World

Told by her son Mischa Huijsmans

A world renowned virologist in the eye of the hurricane

‘Undiagnosed pneumonia: request for information.’ In the final hours of 2019, Marion Koopmans receives the innocuous news that will turn the world on its head. Almost exactly a year later, she boards a plane to Wuhan, China, as part of the WHO team investigating the origins of the largest pandemic in a century. In A Virologist in a Changing World, Marion Koopmans revisits her experiences with major outbreaks including SARS, Ebola, MERS, H1N1 and of course the COVID 19 pandemic. Together with her son, Mischa Huijsmans, she reflects on science in times of crisis, on the ever fascinating nature of viruses and how they work, on her sudden rise to prominence, on kooky conspiracies and pandemic deniers, on global cooperation, fast funding and the sometimes murky lines between politics and science, to ultimately ask the question: will we be ready for the next pandemic?

Bezige

Excerpt from War Against the Water:

On 4 and 5 February a severe storm raged across the Netherlands, with disastrous results: the national death toll was 380, along with 16,700 cattle. Overijssel was the most severely impacted, with at least 305 dead. In his Description of the Overijssel Flood of February 1825, Johannes ter Pelkwijk, a teacher from Zwolle, described the dramatic scenes that had taken place town by town. One scene was more heart wrenching than the next: many people saw their dear ones drown before their very eyes. In a ditch near Zwartsluis, five bodies from the same family were found. The mother had been in labor; the head of the infant was already visible. Yet Ter Pelkwijk also described scenes of consolation, such as the members of one family whose lives had been preserved “by a miraculous act of Providence,” and the visit to the disaster area by the crown prince of Orange. …Flood disasters and the history of the Netherlands are inextricably linked. Flood disasters make for a fascinating paradox within the culture of our national memory. On the one hand there are the traumatic events from the past that expose the vulnerability faced by the Dutch: all too often they have lost the struggle with the natural elements.

LOTTE JENSEN (b. 1972) is a professor of Dutch Language and Culture at Radboud University Nijmegen and writes about national identity, Dutch literature and history. Her previous works include The Glorification of the Past and Celebrating Peace: The Emergence of Dutch Identity, 1648 1815. She also edited the anthologies Napoleon’s Legacy and The Great and Terrible Flood.

Lotte Jensen

War Against the Water A Cultural History

The fascinating relationship between the Dutch and the water through the centuries

For centuries the Dutch have waged a war against the water. Many times we were able to tame the ‘water wolf,’ but just as often we have faced devastating floods such as the St. Elizabeth’s Flood of 1421 or the North Sea flood of 1953. Vulnerability and pride go hand in hand in cultural depictions of these catastrophic events. In photos, stories and monuments, writers and artists highlight both the disastrous consequences for these communities as well as their resilience.

War Against the Water tells the story of floating cradles carrying infants, Dutch lions, fatherly monarchs, community fundraisers, and the boy who put his finger in the dike. But Lotte Jensen also shows how the cultural imagination gains new relevance over time. With rising sea levels now representing a growing threat, acknowledging our vulnerability is more important than ever.

World rights: De Bezige Bij • Literary non fiction • 320 pages • September 2022 Full English translation in preparation

Excerpt from the preface of Across the Divide:

A mother in Rwanda befriended the man who murdered her nine month old daughter; a queer man in the US became friends with the neo Nazi who left him for dead in an alley; a boy forged a bond with the man who kidnapped him, shot him in the head and then left him in a remote nature reserve. This is a book about unlikely friendships. About people who grew close despite extreme differences.

'

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Praise for previous work:

A bright and passionate read.'

Bas Heijne

Some books, every lawyer should read. Twelve years ago, that was Richard Süsskind’s The End of Lawyers. Now it is The Paper Palace of Maurits Chabot.’

Erik Jan Bolsius

MAURITS CHABOT (b. 1992) is a historian and writes for newspaper De Volkskrant. His first book, The Paper Palace (2020), investigated how to reform justice in order to best serve victims. It argues that justice requires more than having a long juridical procedure confined to the simple question: right or wrong, victim or perpetrator. The Paper Palace was critically acclaimed and hailed as an absolute must read.

Maurits Chabot Across the Divide

Stories about unlikely friendships

Exceptional research drawing on years of interviews with people in regions of conflict, exploring the thin line between foes and friendship

A Hutu and a Tutsi in Rwanda. An American police officer and a bank robber. An Israelian and a Palestinian girl. A neo-Nazi and a member of the queer community. These are friendships between people who, at first glance, seem destined to be enemies. In Across the Divide, Maurits Chabot takes his readers on a journalistic quest into the heart of Rwanda, along the checkpoints of the Israel Palestine border, inside prisons of the US and art galleries in Oslo. While travelling through regions of conflicts and war, he investigates how people reconciled. Is there any limit to empathy? What does it take to have friendships emerge from dramatic conflicts? And what is there for others to learn from their stories of hope and resilience?

World rights: Thomas Rap • Literary non fiction

384 pages

English sample translation available

Excerpt from What the Fuck:

‘Maryam, this role isn’t about you, so stop taking everything so personally,’ I’d be told, and ‘ you ’ re not like other Moroccans’ and ‘ you ’ re modern’ and ‘don’t think about what you would do, think about what the average Moroccan woman would do.’

I felt dirty and used and I was ashamed of the image I was supposed to portray: negative, unloved, aggressive, passive. I felt ashamed around my colleagues and crew members. Did they think that’s what I was like too, just because I’m Moroccan? Because the Moroccan culture I know is completely different. Or were they right, did they have a better sense of who I was than I did? If Dutch people thought that I was the kind of person I portrayed on screen, I had to fix that shit. But how was I supposed to do that if no one was listening?

At the age of twenty, I didn’t know much, but I knew I didn't want to be what they were turning me into. I was more than that all Moroccan women were much more than that.

MARYAM HASSOUNI (b. 1985) made her acting debut at the age of fifteen. After a brilliant career and a degree in English Literature she decided to focus on her writing. She has previously published a children’s book.

Maryam Hassouni What the Fuck

Maryam Hassouni rises to fame at only fifteen and ends up being the first Dutch actress to win an Emmy. Over the years she plays a wide range of characters. She enjoys her work, but is often surprised to find the same clichéd stories being told over and over again stories she can’t relate to at all. Slowly it dawns on Maryam that for her, the movie industry has become synonymous with destruction and misery. Even though she wants to be an actor, she finds it becomes impossible for her to continue. She goes to college and decides to start writing her own stories. When she is offered a major part in a TV show and decides, against her better judgment, to go for it, things go badly wrong. It’s not until years later, when she reads the case file detailing her allegations and the resulting investigation and is confronted with the lies and twisted facts, that she knows for sure: ‘It’s not me who’s sick the system is sick.’

‘It’s not me who’s sick the system is sick.’

Excerpt from As Long As They’re Happy:

Who am I to decide what skills other parents and guardians should be teaching their children? The answer to that question is very simple: I have no business whatsoever telling other people how to raise their children, nor do I want to. What I do want to do, however, is give them a push in the right direction. To this end, I will set out five goals that I believe we should be striving for. You could describe them as a set of basic skills and qualities that will help our children to live together peacefully and democratically in adult life and equip them with the tools they need to face a number of complex social issues.

The five child rearing goals that I feel we should strive for are:

A well developed sense of empathy

Critical and independent thinking

Social responsibility and an awareness of our democratic values

Resilience and determination

A creative mindset and approach to life

MARILSE EERKENS (b. 1967) is a journalist and social psychologist. She spent more than five years working an editor for J/M Ouders, a magazine for parents of children between the ages of 4 and 16. She has also written articles about parenting for newspaper The Correspondent. She previously published What Do We Do with the Baby? About Attachment, Brain Development and Childcare

Marilse Eerkens

As Long As They’re Happy

What do we want to achieve with the way we raise our children?

Children in the Netherlands are among the happiest in the world. But are they among the kindest, too? Are they capable of critical thinking and do they feel engaged in society?

Childrearing is no easy task. Parents are raising their children in a competitive, individualist society, all while carrying the baggage from their own childhoods. That's why it’s important to reflect on the purpose of childrearing, in the interests both of the child and the wider society. Because parenting is so much more than preventing behavioural problems it’s also about helping a person reach their full potential as a human being.

As Long As They’re Happy assists every parent, guardian and policymaker in this task. On the basis of five parenting goals, Marilse Eerkens shows how we can prepare children for the future and teach them to live peacefully and democratically in our increasingly complex society.

Praise for All My Mothers:

‘Terpstra’s cheeks are burning in this family saga (…) In the course of her research she has unearthed a chapter in regional social history that’s still shocking today, with the plight of women at its heart.’

Trouw

‘An extraordinarily frank, honest family history, with the mothers taking center stage, the force that keeps the community together.’

– Geschiedenis Magazine

‘When you finish this impressive historical saga you find yourself thinking that every village deserves a book like this. ’

NRC Handelsblad

‘

An impressive ode to seven generations of women. ’

de Volkskrant

ANITA TERPSTRA (b. 1974) studied journalism and art history. She previously wrote acclaimed thrillers and Full House, a successful non fiction book about large families from the past, and the novel Mother Mafia

Anita Terpstra All My Mothers

A confrontational family history of the illiterate, poor and workmen

Apart from the fact that her grandparents were born and buried there, Anita Terpstra knew almost nothing about the history of the Frisian village of Harkema, until a friend forwarded her a disconcerting article asking: 'This is where your family comes from, isn't it?'

It is the beginning of a search for the background of her ancestors, the village and its surroundings. An area traditionally notorious for its extreme poverty, inbreeding and population of alcoholics, criminals, immorals and illiterate. A place where, moreover, people still lived in huts and converted chicken coops until the mid-20th century. Why did her family have to live in poverty for so long? The answer to that question turns out to be inextricably linked to the history of the peat and moorlands in the eastern part of Friesland.

Praise for The Dead Man No One Missed:

‘If there is one thriller writer in the Netherlands who keeps reinventing themselves, it’s Corine Hartman.’

Mediahuis kranten

‘Corine Hartman is highly versatile. Her brilliantly written Jessica Haider series has a gritty intensity that’s rare in Dutch fiction. Faye van Laar, who suffers from borderline disorder, is also a compelling investigator. And now, in painter Eva Romeijn, suddenly we get our very own Miss Marple (...) Eminently readable. ’

**** VN Detective & Thrillergids

‘She is our very own Agatha Christie. For many years, she has been one of the Netherlands’ bestselling authors (...) After reading this cozy whodunit, you’ll never look at the country’s Achterhoek region the same way again.’

Jan Magazine

CORINE HARTMAN (b. 1964) worked as a screenwriter for many years and now has fifteen thrillers to her name. Her books are celebrated for their gritty action sequences and fascinating characters. She has been nominated for the Golden Noose Award five times and is the recipient of a Storytel Original Award and two Hebban Awards.

Corine Hartman

The Dead Man No One Missed

A gripping murder mystery

‘Corine Hartman is among our country’s best. In The Dead Man No One Missed, she demonstrates just how versatile an author she is.’ **** - Vrouwenthrillers

Painter Eva Romeijn, born and raised in an idyllic small town, gets an exciting commission from her neighbor, Baron Frederick van Zonnewoud. When he goes on to vanish without a trace, she becomes convinced that something terrible has happened to him, even though her friends all think her concerns are overblown. Local gossip about the rich baron hints at a darker side to his personality, but who would hate him to the point of wanting him dead? Is this about centuries old conflicts between families, or is something else afoot? Courageous and determined, Eva sets out in search of the truth but she may be getting in over her head...

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Genre: Novel

Pages: 300

Published: May 2022

English sample translation available

Nikki Dekker deepdeepblue

Winner of the C.C.S. Crone Stipendium Prize 2022

The world of the mysterious flatfish, homosexual seals, self-aware bluestreak cleaner wrasse, and much more

Anemonefish always live in groups that contain one female (the biggest fish) and a harem of males (or family, depending on how you look at it). The largest male mates with the female. When the female dies, the largest male then becomes a female and mates with the second largest male, who is then the largest. And so the circle continues. You are not born female, but you turn yourself into a female when circumstances demand it.

Nikki Dekker explores what the creatures of the deep can teach us about love and identity in an associative way

Without a swimming certificate, your chances of survival diminish, as the narrator of deepdeepblue knows. She has learned how to remain calm in turbulent waters and that when the sea is rough, it's best to dive to the bottom and let the roaring waves crash over you. But in real life, such lessons are of little value.

deepdeepblue is a rich, essay like novel about the unstoppable longing for unknown places, other lives, and the water that always sustains us.

Anne Eekhout Mary

Rights sold in thirteen territories

'A compelling novel, full of elegantly worded observations and horrifying stories.' Parool

The year is 1816 when Mary Shelly, only eighteen years of age, creates the iconic story of Frankenstein’s monster. It is the same summer that Mary and her lover Percy Shelley visit Lord Byron and John Polidori at Lake Geneva. The friends spend long evenings by the fire, drinking laudanum infused wine while reading one another ghost stories. One night Lord Byron suggests that they each write a ghost story of their own and this triggers a memory in Mary, taking her back four years earlier to Scotland, where she spent the summer and met Isabella Baxter. As Mary falls in love with Isabella, they are plunged into an enigmatic adventure in which imagination and reality prove to be equally strong components. It is from this memory that her story about Frankenstein’s monster arises.

Anne Eekhout brings the young mother, feminist avant la lettre and writer Mary Shelley to life in a highly original novel that is crafted from real historic events and imbued with great imagination.

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Colibri(Bulgaria)

ChinaTranslationand

PublishingHouse(China)

Fraktura(Croatia)

Dobrovský(CzechRep.)

Gutkind(Denmark)

KustantamoS&S(Finland)

Gallimard(France)

btbVerlag(Germany)

Libri(Hungary)

NeriPozza(Italy)

Marginesy(Poland)

PushkinPress(UK/ANZ)

HarperCollins/HarperVia (USA/Canada)

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Rightssold:

Text(ANZ)

Fraktura(Croatia)

Gallimard(France)

Marsilio(Italy)

ArtRage(Poland)

Beletrina(Slovenia)

Diogenes(Switzerland)

HarvillSecker(UK)

Pantheon(USA)

Genre:Novel

Pages

Published

Stefan Hertmans

The Ascent

Nominated for the Libris Literature Prize

61,000 copies sold

‘Hertmans has never written as thrilling a novel.’ **** – De Standaard

In the summer of 1979, a house in Ghent caught Stefan Hertmans’ attention. The drooping wisteria was dusty, but the scent struck him deeply and took him back to his youth. He bought the property on a whim. It was only after selling the house twenty years later that he was confronted with what happened there during WWII. It was a bewildering discovery that the previous Flemish owner had been an SS member. ‘It is incomprehensible,’ Hertmans writes, ‘that everything that I could have already known or at least suspected, I overlooked.’ Gradually, the man he hopes to understand comes into view, as well as his Dutch pacifist wife and children.

Hertmans speaks with relatives, consults archives, finds intimate documents. In his memories, he wanders again through all the rooms in which he lived for so long.

Lisa Weeda Aleksandra

Shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize and Bronze Owl Award

Literary Talent of 2022 de Volkskrant

54,000 copies sold

In her debut novel, Lisa Weeda unfolds her family’s extraordinary history, which begins with her great grandmother Aleksandra. In 1942, she is deported from Ukraine and put to work in the war industry in Germany. Later, granddaughter Lisa travels to her grandmother’s birthplace and ‘meets’ on the wings of her imagination her great grandfather Nikolaj, who awaited his daughter’s return for three quarters of a century. Together with him, she goes in search of traces of her cousin, who was murdered during the newly reignited conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Aleksandra is the story of a family from the East and West that just can’t break free from an area that never seems to find peace and where there is always conflict. Lisa Weeda found the form and the voice to tell this profound story in a grandiose way.

Garamond(CzechRep.) TurbineForlag(Denmark) LeBruitduMonde(France)

KanonVerlag(Germany)

Göncöl(Hungary)

CappelenDam(Norway)

WAB(Poland)

CasaCărţiideŞtiinţă (Romania)

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Genre: Philosophy

Pages: 176

Published: Mar. 2020

English sample translation available

‘This book is a provocation, a challenge, a task for us all. It grabs hold of you and doesn’t let you go. '

Jurriën Hamer

Why Bad Guys Have Bad Luck

A new philosophy of free will

Winner of the Socrates Cup Prize 2022

Does a millionaire have the right to be rich? Should we forgive even a murderer? And can a person ever change their fate? It all depends on our answer to a fundamental question: do we have free will?

For centuries philosophers have had their doubts as to the answer, and for decades biologists and neurologists have been declaring that free will does not exist. Each year the stack of evidence against free will grows taller: we are a product of our genes, of our history and of our circumstances. And yet we cannot let free will go. This myth has more influence today than ever in our criminal justice system, our economy and our quest for happiness.

Jurriën Hamer thinks further where others shy away and calls into question the role of free will. Why Bad Guys Have Bad Luck is a confronting debut with radical implications for the way we live from our politics to our most intimate relationships.

Author Rutger Bregman

Gerard Janssen Hackers

fascinating and very accessible book.’

Handelsblad

Sooner or later, a hacker shows up in almost every Netflix series. Then, a series of numbers and letters flash across the screen before voilà the secret code for turning off the security cameras appears. But what do hackers actually do? And, how do they do it?

Journalist Gerard Janssen discovered that they don't share their secrets with just anyone. But if you want to learn the art of hacking yourself, hackers are always willing to help. Janssen penetrated the hackers' closed universe and discovered a rich subculture, a close knit activist community with a common aim: to maintain an open, free and secure Internet. Hackers is an intriguing and exciting book about female hackers, the vulnerability of election results, and how three Dutch hackers managed to hijack Trump's Twitter account.

probing and evocative portrait of the bizarre world of the warriors of the Internet.’ Financieel

Sandra Langereis Erasmus

Life of a Maverick

Winner Libris History Prize 2021 30,000 copies sold

‘Ambitious biography turns Erasmus into a man of flesh and blood.’ Trouw

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Ullstein(Germany)

Mondadori(Italy)

Rightssold: Genre:Biography,full colourillustrations

Pages:702(excluding footnotes,register, acknowledgements& bibliography,81pp.)

Published:Mar2021

Englishsampletranslation available

Erasmus is one of the greatest authors of Europe. He embodies the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern day. His significance for literary and scientific history is immense. Even today, thousands of his letters on subjects such as moral constraint and freedom of press have lost nothing of their significance.

The majority of Erasmus’ life and work has been neglected until now. Sandra Langereis is the first biographer who does justice to his life story by closely following his correspon dence and describing the genesis of his entire literary legacy. She depicts him as the lively author of In Praise of Folly as well as a brazen biblical scholar who came up against inquisitors, but also Martin Luther. This rich biography makes history’s relevance palpable. Erasmus has never been portrayed this smart, sharp, brave, angry, scared and human. Never before has a biography shone as vivid a spotlight on Erasmus’ day and age.

Bart Van Loo

The Burgundians

300,000 copies sold worldwide

'Told with bounce, sprinkling his narrative with many entertaining asides. It’s never less than fascinating.'

Times, Best Books of 2021

Bart Van Loo takes the reader on a journey through a thousand years of European history 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 an astonishing account of emerging cities, awakening individualism 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. Bart Van Loo’s equally thrilling and educational exploration of the Middle Ages develops into an impressive cultural history.

Worldrights

ChinaRenminUniversity Press(China)

Flammarion(France)

Znak(Poland)

KarposBooks(Serbia)

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Excl.WorldEnglish:Janklow& Nesbit

Rightssold

Siltala(Finland)

ActesSud(France)

Suhrkamp(Germany)

Gramedia(Indonesia)

Feltrinelli(Italy)

W.A.B.(Poland)

Taurus(Spain)

NaturOchKultur(Sweden)

TheBodleyHead(UK) Norton(USA)

David Van Reybrouck Revolusi

Shortlisted for the Libris History Prize 2021 106,000 copies sold ‘Monumental. A book whose force, as you turn its pages, only increases’ **** De Standaard

Indonesia’s struggle for independence, which reached its climax in the 1940s, has long been regarded as a conflict between the colonial power, the Netherlands, and the colonized Dutch East Indies. But in fact, it belonged to world history. David Van Reybrouck’s Revolusi is the first book to go beyond the national perspective and demonstrate the conflict’s global significance.

Indonesia was the first country to declare independence after WWII. Once the Japanese occupation had been ended, young rebels engaged in armed resistance against any new form of domination. British, Australian, and above all Dutch troops were sent to restore order and keep the peace, but instead their presence ignited the first modern war of decolonization. That struggle inspired independence movements in Asia, Africa, and the Arab world. The whole world had become involved with the Revolusi, and the whole world was changed by it.

'

Tom Rooduijn Amstel 278

Amstel 278 is an incredibly rich book which sweeps the reader along in the risky lives of two fascinating inhabitants of the capital city during World War II.'

*****

NRC Handelsblad

Not long after the Germans occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, Géza Weisz and his family had to go into hiding. Along with a handful of others, Weisz turned up at the home of Fritz Rimathé, a Swiss doctor. The address: Amstel 278. Both men kept a journal. Frits provides a detailed account of his life in Amsterdam, ranging from the raids in his neighbourhood to the artists' resistance movement and the searches of his home. Géza describes the mounting tension between those in hiding, and a touching reunion with his son Fransje, who is hiding elsewhere.

Their claustrophobic existence ends abruptly in August 1944, when one of Géza’s childhood friends is driven to betrayal. Thanks to its wealth of autobiographical documents, Amstel 278 is a compelling narrative describing life – both public and underground during the occupation.

World rights: Thomas Rap

Genre: Literary non fiction

Pages: 416

Published: Feb. 2022

English and German sample translations and translated five star review in NRC Handelsblad available

Two diaries, two destinies, all under one roof.

A unique story about going into hiding during World War II