Foreign Rights Guide Frankfurt Book Fair 2021 by De Bezige Bij

FO R E I G N RIGHTS GUIDE

DE BEZIGE BIJ T H E B U SY B E E F R A N K F U RT B O O K FA I R

2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

FOREIGN RIGHTS GUIDE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR 2021

Anne Eekhout Lisa Weeda Jens Meijen Auke Kok Ronald Giphart

NEW LITERARY FICTION Mary ................................................................................... 2 Aleksandra .......................................................................... 6 The Light Years ................................................................ 10 Tough Guy ....................................................................... 14 Night Terror ..................................................................... 16

Rob van Essen Frank Martinus Arion

MODERN CLASSIC Rescue Swimming ............................................................ 18 Double Play ...................................................................... 20

Heleen Debruyne Dalena van Heugten

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION The Boundless River ........................................................ 22 A Family Walk ................................................................. 24 The Foundations ............................................................... 26 27 Beats Per Minute ......................................................... 28 We Nihilists: A Quest for the Spirit of Digitalization ..... 30 I Compel: Recovering From an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder ............................................................................ 32 The House Friend ............................................................. 34 Night’s Rest: Why Sleep Keeps Our Minds Healthy ....... 36

Roel Janssen

COMMERCIAL FICTION The Money Launderer ...................................................... 38

Mathijs Deen Marcel Möring Ramsey Nasr Henk Pröpper Hans Schnitzler Erwin Roebroeks

GRAPHIC NOVEL Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should All Be Feminists ............................................ 40

Peter Buwalda Mathijs Deen W.F. Hermans Stefan Hertmans Helena Hoogenkamp Peter Terrin

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION Otmar’s Sons .................................................................... 42 The Lightship ................................................................... 43 A Guardian Angel Recalls: The Cloud of Unknowing .... 44 The Ascent........................................................................ 45 Adoring Louis Claus ........................................................ 46 All The Blue ..................................................................... 47

Laura Jansen Raoul de Jong Sandra Langereis Bart Van Loo Marcia Luyten David Van Reybrouck

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION We Saw a Light: Reports From Lesbos ........................... 48 Jaguar Man ....................................................................... 49 Erasmus: Life of a Maverick ............................................ 50 The Burgundians .............................................................. 51 Máxima Zorreguieta: Motherland .................................... 52 Revolusi ............................................................................ 53

DE BEZIGE BIJ ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

‘Telling the best possible story is more important than the truth.’ – Mary Shelley Intrigued by Mary Shelley’s life story, Anne Eekhout started to read biographies about Mary, her letters and diary entries. And reading about her, an image came to mind. This woman, this young woman, knew the importance of imagination. And she was not afraid to take her place in a world dominated by men. Through reading and researching Anne Eekhout found those wondrous, mysterious bits of life from which stories can grow, and she fell in love with them… ‘Anne Eekhout is one of the

most interesting young

authors writing today.’ – Hanna Bervoets, author of We Had To Remove This Post ANNE EEKHOUT (b. 1981) made her debut in 2014 with the novel Dogma, which was nominated for the Bronzen Uil Prize for best debut. In 2017 she published One Night (nominated for the BNG Literature Prize), and in 2019 Nicolas and the Disappearance of the World, which was selected as the Best Book for Young Adults.

NEW LITERARY FICTION ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Anne Eekhout

Mary Sold in five territories pre-publication What mysterious events fuelled Mary Shelley’s brilliant imagination? 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. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Pushkin Press (UK/ANZ) pre-empt, HarperCollins/HarperVia (US/Canada), Germany: Auction, deadline for first offers 15th of October, 11:00 hrs CET, Gallimard (France), Neri Pozza (Italy) pre-empt – Novel – 384 pages – November 2021 – English synopsis and sample translation available

Fragment Mary, Anne Eekhout The Witching Hour This is the hour. Every night she dies – her daughter dies. She never finds out until morning, although deep in the night she does see her lying so still, her head full of sleep. But she knows it must have happened at this hour, the witching hour, because she always wakes up. Most nights she doesn’t stay awake for long: she pulls the slipped-off sheet up over her and presses her nose into Percy’s warm back. He’s fast asleep, she falls asleep again. But once in a while it lures her out of bed. She doesn’t know quite what. She doesn’t want to, she’s tired, she wants to go on sleeping, go on with the night, move past this hour, but she already knows the truth: she has to feel it. Every minute of this hour must burn against her skin. Because this is what she brought into the world. And this is what slipped away so fast. The veranda keeps her dry, her cape keeps her warm, but out there, close by, the world is destroying itself. They have been here for two weeks now, in Geneva, and almost every day since they arrived, storms and gales have performed a frenzied ritual. Mary loves it when the lightning lasts, when it stretches like a cat over several seconds, illuminating the sky, tingeing it light purple like a canvas, a tent that roofs the earth, making the things below unreal, a story, yet more meaningful than ever: her bare feet on the veranda, the weeds in the grass, the willow by the water, the Jura rising across the lake, the boat rocking in a bowl of light. In the other direction, up the hill, a weak light burns at Albe and John’s house. It reassures her: she may awaken at three every night, but at least Albe has not even gone to bed yet. He is keeping 4

watch – over the sheet of paper in front of him, no doubt, where his quill performs its chaotic dance, writing what dwells within him into the world. She spins and wobbles on her toes. In the darkness, she couldn’t find her boots. Little William is quick to wake up, though indifferent to thunder, and her stepsister Claire is finally sleeping too – in her own bed for once. She is like a small child, and Percy takes her by the hand like a father. No, not like a father. Decidedly not like a father. Lightning spears through the air and the buzz lingers, second after second, over the surface of the water, among the treetops, on her skin. A thunderstorm here is not the same as in England. More awake. More alive. More real. As if she could touch the light, cling to it, as if it clings to her. The roar, the deep rumble feels somehow embodied, like a thing that at any moment could join the living. Could enter her chest, her heart, her blood. There seems no end to the series of days like nights, the sun rarely shows its face, the garden is a swamp, the landscape dumbstruck, and sometimes they turn to each other and say, maybe this is the end of the world. The Last Judgment. But then they laugh. Because they all know God exists only in dreams and nursery rhymes. Mary rubs her hands together for warmth. The chilly air nips at her toes. No, not only then, she thinks. He is there, sometimes, when you’re very, very frightened. But back in bed, she can sleep no longer. The cold has sunk into her body and nothing – not a sheet, not the thought of a blazing hearth, not Percy’s warm back – is now capable of warming her. Translation by David McKay

‘The Don Cossacks, whom my great-grandfather descends from, have a coat of arms: a majestic white stag with a golden arrow in its back. To me, that symbolizes the stretch of land where Aleksandra was born. The stag is not dead, but things are not going so well with that animal either. It is permanently wounded. The Don Cossacks’ stags play a magical ancestral role in my novel, as guardians and protectors of my family: sometimes they can intervene on their old ground, sometimes not.’

Praise: ‘Lisa Weeda’s writing is

precise, sensory and

compelling.’ – Jury CCS Crone-stipendium 2020

LISA WEEDA (b. 1989) is a Dutch-Ukrainian writer, literary programme maker, screenwriter, audiofan and virtual reality director. The written word has always been has always been the basis of her work, but the form varies. Ukraine, her grandmother’s motherland, is often central in her work. Aleksandra is her debut.

Lisa Weeda

Aleksandra A heart-wrenching family saga covering an entire century in Ukraine 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.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Historical fiction / Autofiction – 348 pages – October 2021 – English sample translation available soon

Fragment Aleksandra, Lisa Weeda When I first visited Odessa with my mother, in May 2015, Kolya had already been missing for two months. It was our first evening and we were all sitting in my great-aunt Klava’s living room. Uncle Andriy raised vodka glass number one, glass odyn. ‘Thank you all for coming,’ he said. ‘To our country, our city. We hope that, despite the fragile circumstances here, you will feel the love for our country. As we do. Na-zdo-rov-ya! Or: Budjmo! Russian, Ukrainian, whatever you like, between our ancestors and our Ukrainian passports, we’re kind of in the middle.’ We toasted. Nina closed her eyes, squeezed my knee, downed the contents of the shot glass decorated with a picture of Volendam in a single gulp, and banged it on the table. ‘Ay, Ljiesinka, I’m too old for this,’ she said. Andriy took the bottle and poured another round, his hand maneuvering nonchalantly over the table. The vodka ran over the plates of herring and chicken, over slices of tomato, wedges of bell pepper, and stuffed eggs. ‘Odyn, dva, tri,’ he said to Nina, raising his thumb, index finger, and then middle finger in the air, and then holding his hand there, like Jesus in the icon behind him. ‘Otherwise it will bring misfortune. We do not need that right now.’ ‘Me, too?’ Nina asked theatrically, patting her chest. 8

‘You, too!’ the table chanted. Glass number two, dva. ‘This is for Auntie Nina. That she dared travel here on her own, all the way from the East. She is invincible. Like our country. Like our houses. May she always be safe and may the war on all sides of her home soon be over. Auntie Nina, na zdorovya!’ It went just like at Aleksandra’s, like all the birthdays and holidays of my youth. If I so much as looked away for a moment, I turned back to a re-filled plate. ‘Eat! Do you want something else? Take more of this, it’s delicious!’ Meanwhile, another round of vodka got poured, and I realized as I glanced at the gold-colored clock on Klava’s windowsill: we’re only fifteen minutes in, this dinner has only begun. My aunt Natasha stood up and winked at me. ‘Mind, now, mind,’ she said, pointing at me and winking again, ‘everyone gets a turn.’ She straightened her blue dress with white flowers and exclaimed, ‘Tri!’ Three to ward off misfortune. Listen. Ljiesinka, Marie, I’m grateful you’ve made the journey here. I hope we’ll visit one another more often in the future. Then we’ll come to Holland! Na zdorovya!’ Cheers. Gulp. Bang on the table.

Translation by Jonathan Reeder

Press: ‘The Light Years takes place in the near future. The temperatures have surged. Those who can have moved north, while the rest languish in cities that are only decaying. Meijen’s world is the current one on speed, in which today’s quirks have taken on a neurotic character.’ – Knack ‘The Light Years fits seamlessly in the line of compelling dystopias by George Orwell (1984), Aldous Huxley (A Brave New World) and Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale). In his outstanding debut novel, Meijen shows us “a black hole that has erased reality.”’ – Tzum

JENS MEIJEN (b. 1996) is a writer and PhD researcher in political science. He is also a journalist and literary critic for Humo and editor of the literary magazine DW B. He was Belgium’s first Young Poet Laureate. With his debut poetry collection Xenomorf (2019), he won the C. Buddingh’ Prize and was nominated for the Poetry Debut Prize Aan Zee.

Jens Meijen

The Light Years A scintillating, cerebral novel, shortlisted for the Prix Fintro for Dutch-language literature During a sweltering heatwave, a couple in their early thirties receives a hermit crab in a mysterious post package. Not long before, a friend announced that she is expecting, which reawakens old grief in both of them. They live in a claustrophobic world where the rich have left for the cooler north and drones maintain public order. Despite the stifling heat, they go on bike rides with their friends, host lavish, alcohol-fuelled parties and philosophize about how different everything could have been, about time travel, investments in outer space, and the colonization of other planets. Meanwhile, the couple’s almost obsessive search for the crab’s origins takes them to mouldy cellars, online self-help forums, virtual realities and parched forests. They also return to their old neighbourhood, where, just a stone’s throw from an old coal mine, they dream about what the future could look like. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novel – 240 pages – August 2021 – English and Catalan sample translation available

Fragment The Light Years, Jens Meijen The doorbell rings. I pick up the intercom and ask who it is. Silence. I go downstairs to check, my flipflops slapping against every step. In the vestibule of the apartment building, right before the mailboxes, there’s a pitch-black box. There is a HANDLE WITH CARE sticker on the top and, next to it, a National Postal Service label—one of Amazon’s many subsidiaries. No sender details. I pick it up—not heavy, but unwieldy—and carry it upstairs. Something seems to be sloshing around inside it with every step, like a flat stone in water. You’re waiting in the doorway. I go inside and put the box down on the table. We both stand there looking at it for a moment. ‘Open it,’ you say. I don’t move. ‘What, you think it’s a bomb or something?’ It’s not impossible, actually, although I imagine there are better, cheaper and more efficient ways to get rid of us, if someone wanted to do that. You fold it open. The pungent tang of fish fills the room. Inside the box is a plastic tub with some water in it containing a large, fat hermit crab. His shell is grayish brown and all scratched up, his legs a dull orange. The animal regards us with beady eyes mounted on two skinny stalks, makes a clicking noise, blows a saliva bubble from what is probably his mouth. The creature seems ancient, but maybe it’s 12

just dried out. ‘This must be some kind of joke,’ I say quietly. We text our friends to ask who pulled this stunt. Dimitri sends back the video for a song called “Crab Rave” that features an entire army of crabs dancing to the music. Our friends think we’re joking. They have no idea what we’re talking about. ‘What should we do with it?’ you ask. ‘Cook it,’ I grin, and you roll your eyes. We look over at the hermit crab. We think he’s looking at us, too. Hard to tell. ‘We have to get him a tank,’ you say. ‘Yeah, like in those seafood restaurants,’ I say. ‘A tank for this guy must be pretty expensive. And what do they even eat?’ ‘We can’t just leave him like this.’ ‘We’ve already used up almost all of our water allowance. All those plants of yours are constantly thirsty…’ You cross your arms. ‘They don’t need that much. We’ll just pay extra. Or I’ll drink a little less.’

Translation by Emma Rault This translation was made possible by PEN Català and Flanders Literature

Fragment:

‘If we had stayed in that ordinary house, in the middle of a row, everything would have gone differently. Wedged in and no way out: it was maybe the best thing for us. But we left and went to live in a big, strange house, on the other side of the tracks in a village. This house, free-standing, my mom says with emphasis, has windows on all sides. Sometimes I think it’s how everything that used to be good crawled out, flew away between the high trees and thatched roofs.’

AUKE KOK (b. 1956) is a journalist, nonfiction author and city chronicler for the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. His previous books include The Traitor: The Life and Death of Anton van der Waals, 1974: We Were The Best, This Was Veronica: History of a Pirate, and 1988: We Loved Oranje. In 2016, he published 1936: We Went To Berlin and in 2019 a biography of Johan Cruijff, , which recently has been published in Spanish and will be published in English next year. Tough Guy is his first novel. 14

Auke Kok

Tough Guy A gripping novel about the everlasting love for football: a lifebuoy during a difficult childhood

Tough Guy follows a year in the life of Hidde, a twelve-year-old boy in a seemingly fun but in fact unhappy family. His father can unexpectedly erupt in rage, his fickle mother doesn’t offer any support. Family members mislead one another, lie if it suits them. Outside, when playing football with his friends, Hidde feels safer than at home. He steadily becomes a daydreamer and lifts off into fantasies about heroic feats with the ball, just as he arms himself with silence, with observations of his rebellious brother, who is beaten by their father and humiliated. In that way he survives, through brains and calculating behaviour – a far cry from his heroes on the professional football team that is on its way to a world championship that year, 1969. Hidde is not nearly as tough as his idols in the stadiums. Or is he?

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novel – 304 pages – October 2021

Fragment: ‘It’s always nice telling you about what I’m busy with, when I write to you I see things clearer than when I’m toiling away on my own behind my laptop. The special and at the same time hard part of it is that in fiction writing it all has to come from within, everything emerges from the void of words. And then there’s suddenly a thought, a sentence, in some cases an image that lingers. That’s the first sip, the love at first sight – after that the swamp’s draining can begin.’ About Time Enough: An irresistible generational novel, in which you can lose yourself endlessly. His best

work up until now. – Trouw

From the very beginning, RONALD GIPHART (b. 1965) established himself as a bestselling author with his debut novel I Do Too (1992), which won the prize for the bestselling debut of the year. In the years that followed he published many more bestsellers, including the novels Phileine Says Sorry, I Embrace You With A Thousand Arms, Harem and Dear. Three of his novels have been made into successful feature films. His novella Gala, published as the 2003 Dutch Book Week Gift, had a print run of 800,000 copies. His work has been translated into several languages. His most recent novel Time Enough was very well received. This year saw the publication of Applause: Love In The Time of Corona, intended as an ode to healthcare and a helping hand for local book sellers. 16

Ronald Giphart

Night Terror A writer’s testament that pulls the reader in completely PJ Weber, an originally Dutch writer, can’t make a living from writing alone in New York City. To make ends meet, he does administrative tasks for a company. During the night hours he sends long letters to his American agent from the office where he works. One evening, the secluded building is broken into. While the fear of being discovered has him in a stranglehold and the intruders keep coming closer, Weber begins his testament, a confession perhaps. He writes about his marriage and the death of his parents, authorship, his son in the Netherlands, sexual abuse and the refuge of language. “I live where I write. Home is where my cursor blinks.”

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novel – 188 pages – November 2021

THOMAS RAP ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Praise:

‘It’s not that often that you burst into

uncontrolled

laughter because of a book. Even less common is that you regularly still have to chuckle in the days after reading. This debut by Rob van Essen is that kind of book.’ – NBD Biblion

‘An amusing tour through a troubled but

original

psyche.’ – Het Parool

Twenty-five years ago, ROB VAN ESSEN’s (1963) debut novel was fished out of Thomas Rap’s slush pile. Since then, he has published different novels and story collections, including Fisherman (shortlist 2009 Libris Literature Prize), People Live Here Too (J.M.A. Biesheuvel Prize) and The Good Son (2019 Libris Literature Prize). Last year saw the publication of his most recent short story collection A Man with Good Shoes.

MODERN CLASSIC ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Rob van Essen

Rescue Swimming A cult classic about a hero who slowly but inexorably will win your heart

Rescue Swimming tells the tragicomic story of both an aimless and nameless hero, who gets onto a train one day, gets out during an emergency stop and starts walking. He finds accommodation at a youth hostel and, much to his surprise, is offered a job. Between rain-soaked brides, parched provincial girls and mysterious messages in the sky, he tries to keep afloat. But the longer he stays in no man’s land, the more shadowy the line becomes between insight and madness, between the truth and gibberish. For a moment he seems to find solid ground in the The Mother of All ‘Polonaises’, but the big questions keep tormenting him. Questions such as: Why didn’t he just stay home? and: Who is that strange but stunning girl wandering through the hostel’s gardens at night?

World rights: Thomas Rap – Novel – 224 pages – May 2021

Praise: ‘A fully-fledged political novel, written in a style of nearly

unfathomable quality.’ – Vrij Nederland ‘Although Double Play is a first novel, it is the work of a

mature writer – one who prepared himself for this sort of audience through life experience.’ – World Literature Today |

‘A cleverly constructed novel, full of sharp

social observation and convincing characterisation, it tells us a good deal about Curaçao, about men, and about the darkness that lurks behind the seemingly innocent pastime of dominoes.’ – Carribean Beat

FRANK MARTINUS ARION (19362015) was born in Curaçao. He studied and taught Dutch literature in the Netherlands, where he was active in the Caribbean expatriate community and published poetry and fiction, and worked in Surinam from 1975 onwards. In 1980 he returned to Curaçao, where he was director of the Instituto Lingwistiko Antiano. He published the novel Double Play in 1973 (awarded with the Van der Hoogte Prize), Goodbye to the Queen, 1975), Noble Savages (1979), The Last Freedom (1995) and The Deserters (2006). 20

MODERN CLASSIC

..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Frank Martinus Arion

Double Play A game of dominoes turns into a battle of life and death: Arion reflects on the topics of racism and discrimination and the effects of colonialism on the world On a drowsy, warm Sunday afternoon, four men play a game of dominos underneath a tamarind tree. The apparent calm that envelopes them gives the impression that this is about nothing more than a domino game. However, on this Sunday, their game will evolve into a fight of life or death. The men bring not only their tiles, but also their problems to the domino table: at the end of the day we know their what they think about one another, about each other’s wives, politics and the world. Double Play was translated in several languages and the US movie adaptation was launched in 2017. The movie was produced by Lisa Cortés and Gregory Elias and is directed by Ernest Dickerson (Do The Right Thing; The Wire).

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Büchergilde Gutenberg (Germany) – Novel – 400 pages – First publication: 1973 – Full English translation available

THOMAS RAP

Praise: ‘An enviably well-written and past.’ – Het Parool

journey between present

‘Mathijs Deen shows that the Rhine is not a stale river, but a

stream full of life and stories.’ – Trouw “The only real source of the river is the water that falls on us, from France to the Czech Republic, from Friesland to Italy. There are maps of the basins of the Rhine and the Mass. On Wikipedia there is a clear one. It is a map of a land that no one knows, whose borders have been established by the play between water, elevation changes and gravity. With a little bit of imagination, the shape of the area reminds one of an iceskating bear, front paws outstretched and balanced on one hind leg, winding its way to the west.” MATHIJS DEEN (b. 1962) is a writer and radio producer. His short story collection Brutus is Hungry, nominated for the AKO Literature Prize, was followed by among others The Wadden Islands, Down Old Roads and the novels Among People and The Light Ship, which was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize. His work has been translated into German, Italian and Korean.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Mathijs Deen

The Boundless River Stories from the Realm of the Rhine In which the Rhine is ever present, at times in the lead role, at others as an extra. In The Boundless River Mathijs Deen brings the reader, as he did in his acclaimed books The Wadden Islands and Down Old Roads, into his unique world: the grey zone between fact and fiction, knowledge and imagination. ‘Imagine the river is a character, then she’ll have a birth and death as well. Tell me how she was born.’ That is the question Deen asks a geologist one sunny day in September. The answer that follows is the start of a journey that will carry the reader from a time far before we ever spoke of a European continent to the current day, in which skippers still see the Rhine as a living being, a person. Meandering from the mighty hippos that once grazed on the river’s banks millions of years ago to the exhausted salmon that saw their habitat slowly change, from the girl from ancient Steinheim to the Roman general Corbulo, to the young Goethe and the North Sea fisherman Kommer Tanis – Deen shows how, since the beginning of time, the river has connected and divided, terrified, consoled, sustained and engulfed. World rights: Thomas Rap – Rights sold: MacLehose Press (UK), Option publisher: Iperborea (Italy) – Non-fiction – 336 pages – September 2021 – English sample translation available

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Fragment: ‘I was finally back in the place where I had grown up. The trees that I had missed, the forests and the fields, the emptiness especially, from now on it would always be there. I might have adapted myself to life in Rotterdam, but it had always been too busy for me. Too many people, too many people, too, who felt the need to show how different and special they were. If there’s a difference between the country and the city, I thought in my enormous hotel bed, then it’s that the irrelevance of existence is more obvious in the countryside. Perhaps because you see the coming and going of the seasons, because you know how, when and why the land has changed. Though of course it might also be, I thought, that a misanthrope like me would always think something like that.’ MARCEL MÖRING (b. 1957) work has been widely translated and won numerous prizes. His first novel, Mendel (1990), was an instant success and won the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize for Best Debut. This was soon followed by the The Great Longing (1992), which won the Netherlands’ most prestigious prize at the time, the AKO, while In Babylon (1997) won two Gouden Uil Prizes. In A Dark Wood (2006) won the Bordewijk Prize for Best Dutch Novel, after which he wrote a trilogy of novels, along with essays and poetry. His latest novel Amen (2019) was nominated for the Boekenbon Literature Prize. 24

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Marcel Möring

A Family Walk ‘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 on previous work Four years ago, Marcel Möring returned to the northern Netherlands, where he had grown up. Wandering through the forest and fields, memories returned to him there that seemed far away and deeply hidden. Now, more than half a century later, he can still – somewhere between waking and dreams – walk to his mother’s adopted parents, who had hidden her during the war. In 1945 his mother had chosen to stay with them instead of returning to Rotterdam, her city of birth. ‘It’s a place where I like being, because of the warmth, the smell, the suggestion, as well, of another world, but I can’t touch anything. That is one of the few things forbidden in my grandparents’ home.’ In A Family Walk, Marcel Möring dives, while walking through the landscape of his childhood, into the past and searches for defining people and events. For the first time, he reveals his family history, which is largely characterized by forgetting, forgetting and carrying on. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Option publisher: Luchterhand (Germany) – Autofiction – 96 pages – November 2021– English sample translation available

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Praise: ‘A pamphlet like a bugle call. Nasr pulls

out all the stops in his literary figures of speech, and what a feast that is! […] His siren demands to be heard, twice over.’ NRC Handelsblad ‘His views are sympathetic and testify to a deep

humanism, his style is eloquent and self-aware.’ Tzum Fragment: Dutch instability is great and dangerous. Not because we are in such bad shape financially, but because we, more than in other Western countries, have come to take our lives for granted, to see them as established rights, and our foundations as ornaments.

RAMSEY NASR (b. 1974) is an actor, poet, writer and director. In 2000 he made his debut as a poet with the collection 27 Poems & No Song. In 2005 he was the city poet laureate of Antwerp and from 2009 to 2013 the national poet laureate of the Netherlands. Nasr has been awarded numerous prizes for both his writing and acting work. He is a member of International Theater Amsterdam and regularly publishes opinion pieces about art and politics. 26

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Ramsey Nasr

The Foundations An urgent but hopeful call for a country and world in crisis 70,000 copies sold How do we get out of this crisis? This is the question that Ramsey Nasr, one of the Netherlands’ most versatile artists, asks himself. Nasr concludes that the pandemic has exposed what, for a long time, we have refused to see: our political and economic systems have corroded the foundations of Western society. In an extremely personal and at the same time rational plea, Nasr dissects the corona and climate crises as two disasters that are in fact connected with each other. Step by step, he questions our entire Western way of life. Building on artists like Boccaccio, Rilke and Van Gogh, Nasr makes a plea to radically reconsider our place on earth and our idea of happiness, not as some woolly ideal, but purely out of self-preservation. As such, The Foundations is, besides a penetrating cry from the heart, a political call to rebellion. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Current Affairs – 144 pages – March 2021

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Praise: ‘27 Beats Per Minute is one of the most moving and most

invigorating autobiographies ever written.

This

is a finely polished gem worthy of admiration.’ – Knack ‘It is a concise masterpiece that summarizes a life in the time of corona in the personal, euphoric and precarious shades of one year. Without one’s realising, it covers just about everything: thoughts, emotions, literature, films, loves, feelings, memories, annoyances and doubts. It is a personal essay that touches all highs and lows.’ – Vrij Nederland ‘27 Beats Per Minute is the literary precipitate of a turbulent period of stagnation; a philosophical, musing book with the pleasantly slow heartbeat of the writer, who carries the reader through the city, European literature and history.’ – het Parool HENK PRÖPPER (1958) is the author of the novel The Crab’s Sword and numerous essays. For forty years he has written about the literature and culture of France, the country where he was a diplomat and director of the famous Institut Néerlandais. He was director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature for several years. Pröpper also writes for de Volkskrant, mainly about French subjects. From 2011 to 2016 he was the directorpublisher of De Bezige Bij.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Henk Pröpper

27 Beats per Minute A personal journey of discovery in the desolate streets of Paris Soon after Henk Pröpper moves from Amsterdam to Paris, the world but also his heart nearly come to a stop. He undergoes a major operation, only to awake in an empty city. Paris has transformed into an abandoned stage during its first lockdown. To hasten his recovery Pröpper begins walking. He combs out his immediate surroundings and hunts for the past, discovering countless commemorative plaques and monuments that honour well- and lesser-known Parisians and bring their histories to life. Pröpper also reflects, to the rhythm of his journeys, on his life and the literature that has shaped him. In this way he walks – at times literally – in the footsteps of literary heroes such as Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Albert Camus. 27 Beats Per Minute is a dazzling ode to life, literature and Paris, the French capital that even in her emptiness and desolation is still magnificent.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Mountain Leopard Press (WE) – Memoir – 144 pages – June 2021 – English sample translation available

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Fragment : “In recent years my conviction has grown that the enormous challenges in store for us, such as the approaching climate catastrophe, the post-Covid recovery and the fight against inequality, can only be brought to a successful conclusion when the window through which we see the world – the net – is restored and we critically reflect, in a general sense, on our relationship with technology.” On Little Philosophy of the Digital Abstention: ‘A pleasantly readable plea that not only builds on relevant philosophical literature, but also on the experience of students who endured digital abstention.’ – Trouw ‘An essay Volkskrant

as strong as it is unsettling.’

– de

HANS SCHNITZLER (b. 1968) is a philosopher and journalist. His essays and columns have appeared in publications such as de Volkskrant and Hard Gras. He is also a columnist for the journalistic platform Follow the Money and a lecturer at the Bildung Academie, as well as a frequent guest on TV and radio. Following his successful debut The Digital Proletariat in 2015, Little Philosophy of the Digital Abstention was published in 2017.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Hans Schnitzler

We Nihilists A Quest for the Spirit of Digitalization Why are we mindlessly cooperating with Big Tech’s dubious success story? An elite of tech entrepreneurs has managed to dominate humanity and society within a very short time. Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, a world without services such as WhatsApp, Instagram, SnapChat and the Cloud has become unimaginable. Over the last fifteen years, a collective digital conversion has taken place that has drastically changed our lives. In We Nihilists, Hans Schnitzler asks a question that is rarely asked: how did this virtual class manage to accomplish this? Inspired by, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche’s work on nihilism, he goes in search of the cultural roots of this success. His quest plunges the reader into the wonderful world of the internet age’s archetype: the nerd. At the same time, he holds up a wry mirror: in fact, we are all nerds. The data revolution is threatening to devour her own. With this book, Schnitzler urges us to examine our own role – because only when we become aware of it, change is possible. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Philosophy – 158 pages – October 2021

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Fragment: ‘I called it compulsion, because it felt like compulsion. Things I told myself I had to think and do, and couldn’t avoid. It felt like being locked up inside my head. I was in an internal prison. From one moment to the next, something locked shut in my brain. A click in my brain that I literally felt.’

Interview Algemeen Dagblad: ‘Roebroeks was in the clinic for seven months. “Amazing. I was getting better, losing one compulsion after another. The therapists were strict, and my saviours. I had to do, to an extreme degree, everything I was afraid of – no escape.” Roebroeks learned that his extremely low self-esteem was his underlying problem. “When the compulsion was gone, we could work on that with exercises and therapy.”’

ERWIN ROEBROEKS (b. 1969) works as a writer, researcher and curator in the fields of music and opera. He studied business communications and comparative art studies. He was a critic for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and wrote for musical companies such as the Dutch National Concert Hall Orchestra and the Bayerische Staatsoper. He programmed various music festivals and was guest curator at the Biennale di Venezia.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Erwin Roebroeks

I Compel Recovering from an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder ......

He showers for eight hours every day, drinks soapsuds while in surgical wear, and cuts his skin open to clean it from the inside From the age of twelve to twenty-six, Erwin Roebroeks finds himself in the grip of a compulsive disorder. The medical world initially writes him off: he will never get rid of his severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). And yet, after a long process and a three-year clinical treatment with the most extreme of therapies, he succeeds in doing what virtually no one does. He is freed from his compulsion. He leaves the clinic as if reborn; however, outside he is confronted with the years that he missed. What does the wide world mean for someone who has seen the darkest depths within himself in an isolated clinic? What do friendship and love hold for someone who has known great loneliness? In I Compel, Roebroeks investigates how he could be cured, and what it means to be freed from an affliction that controlled him for so long. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Psychology – 219 pages – September 2021 – English sample translation available soon

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Press on previous work:

‘That is perhaps what makes The Opportunists such a

successful debut:

Debruyne’s talent for getting down a

one sharp characterisation. funny, striking – like the whole novel.’ – Het

whole type of person with Sharp, Parool

‘After I’d finished The Opportunists, I struggled for days to get into anybody else’s book. Everything else suddenly seemed much greyer, so much more “tedious” than this

surprising, dazzling debut.’ – Tzum

HELEEN DEBRUYNE (b. 1988) grew up in West Flanders, Belgium. She works for radio station Klara and writes for Humo, among other publications. She is also known for Dirty Sheets, the book and podcast of the same name about sex and the body. Her well-received debut novel The Opportunists was published in 2016.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Heleen Debruyne

The House Friend ‘For three years now, my grandmother has been standing in the garden shed. In a stainless-steel urn – the cheapest model. It’s her punishment, my mother says.’ Why would a cremated grandmother deserve punishment? In search of answers, the protagonist delves into her family history. During the late 1960s, it seems the entire world is changing, but in this bourgeois Catholic part of Belgium, much remains the same. As a child, her father goes with his parents to church every week, as a formality. Afterwards, they eat, drink and listen to Maria Callas, often in the company of Albert, their rich, eccentric ‘house friend’. He also pays for all of their family vacations to Europe’s elegant resorts. But under that layer of luxury and the good life hide unmentionable, destructive desires. Why do mothers whisper that they do not dare leave their child alone with Albert? And why does love so often resemble a transaction in this environment? Heleen Debruyne found inspiration for The House Friend in her grandparents’ letters and journals. These prompted her to explore motherhood, love and intimacy. A story about how the past stubbornly keeps influencing the present. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Non-fiction – 192 pages – October 2021

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Fragment: ‘What can I add to the range of books about sleep? On the one hand, I want provide insight into the importance of sleep for our mental health. We all know that sleep is good for us, but why exactly is that? On the other hand, I want to go back to the vivid dreams of my childhood. Books about dreams with a scientific basis are rare. Books that couple a scientific explanation for dreams with our mental health are even rarer.’

DALENA VAN HEUGTEN is a psychologist at Maastricht University, where she completed a doctorate in disassociation and sleep. She carried out her research at the University of Oxford’s sleep laboratory. In addition to her writing, she connects scientific research with clinical education and clinical practice.

NEW LITERARY NON-FICTION

Dalena van Heugten

Night’s Rest Why Sleep Keeps Our Minds Healthy The mystery surrounding sleep unraveled on the basis of recent research Sleep is without a doubt the most important activity in our lives. Sleep keeps us fit and healthy, and ensures that we function. After a night of sleep, we feel more energetic, sharper and happier than after a bad night. Young parents are often at their wits’ end, just like people with intrinsic sleeping problems. On top of that, sleep issues often go paired with mental disorders such as anxiety, depression and psychosis. But why is sleep so essential for our mental wellbeing? And if it’s so important that we rest, why do we dream so vividly? In Night’s Rest psychologist and sleep researcher Dalena van Heugten unravels the mystery surrounding sleep. Writing in a clear style, she explains the functions of sleeping and dreaming based on fascinating clinical examples and reveals the most recent scientific developments she and her colleagues around the world are working on. A dazzling book full of new insights about the fundamental importance of sleeping and dreaming.

World rights: Thomas Rap – Non-fiction – 304 pages –August 2021

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Fragment:

‘Jeen Mansveld has the feeling that he’s floating. No, he’s drifting. It’s dark all around him. Black. He moves his hands, groping. The water’s caress feels pleasant on his body. Cooling. A serene peace takes hold of him. No stress, no business, no deals. No lies, arguments, scams. No escapes, conflicts, fights. No fear. Gravity has him in her grip. No, a mysterious force pushes him downward. Does he hear voices? He doesn’t know, just as he doesn’t know how he got here. His body, like a manatee’s, is too cumbersome to turn over in the water and he is too drunk to think clearly.’

ROEL JANSSEN (b. 1947) is a financeeconomics journalist, former editor at NRC Handelsblad and fervent marine yachtsman. He has reported on great economic events and financial crises while holding a variety of jobs over the past thirty years. He also writes thrillers and contributed as a screenwriter to the series The Party. In 2007 Janssen won the Gouden Strop prize for his thriller The Tenth Woman. The 2004 publication of Guilty Gold caused a stir within the Dutch parliament. His thriller All Is Lost, about the refugee crisis, was published in 2017.

THRILLER

Roel Janssen

The Money Launderer A thriller about money laundering practices, political infiltration and a controversial Italian monastery Rhonda Zander is sent to France to investigate the death of a Dutch banker and former minister whose body was found in the pool at his villa in the south of the country. The young, ambitious public prosecutor stumbles on more and more inconsistencies, but the French police quickly close the case. She discovers that the banker was involved with an institute that trains radical-right youth to fight for the preservation of traditional European values. The Institute for the Occident is located in a monastery in Italy. Then Rhonda meets Ebbe Wolfswinkel, a lawyer who is also interested in the same institute. He works as a liquidator on the bankruptcy of a company that supplied the institute with religious statues. Driven by their research, Zander and Wolfswinkel meet at the Italian monastery. There, they discover that the institute is a cover for a sinister network of violence and money laundering with tentacles in the highest circles of society. World rights: Cargo – Thriller – 288 pages – May 2020

DE BEZIGE BIJ

Selected praise: ‘Freeman chooses color and diversity for the characters she portrays, and tells part of the story in swirling, winding ribbons and mandala-like circles. For years, she has a been a big advocate for more diversity in children’s books. Freeman is also the creator of the Black princess Arabella, about whom she has made fourteen picture books. Her approach supports Adichie’s universal message.’ – de Standaard ‘Explaining feminism to a child: it’s not exactly obvious. That women should be able to choose for themselves, that girls are just as smart as boys, that as a girl you don’t need to marry at all … but also that it’s okay for boys to be afraid or vulnerable: children will learn it all from this book. With colorful illustrations included, with a lot of attention to diversity. An important picture book!’ – Metro (Belgium) ‘A perfect introduction when introducing children in class or at home to what it means to be a feminist in our time.’ – Feeling

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE (Enugu, 1977) is the author of three award-winning novels: Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah. She also wrote the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele. She lives and works in Nigeria. Photo © Wani Olatunde

MYLO FREEMAN (The Hague, 1959) is an illustrator with over sixty picture books to her name and her work is translated around the world. In 2020, her book Twins! was the Dutch Children’s Book Week Picture Book. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should all Be Feminists Illustrated edition for children 8 years and up

Illustrations by Mylo Freeman With her book We Should All Be Feminists, renowned Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote a global landmark about what it means to be a feminist today. Dutch illustrator Mylo Freeman, who has been an advocate for diversity in children’s books throughout her career, was inspired by her essay and has adapted it for a younger audience. Several years ago, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a lecture about what it means to be a feminist in this day and age. The video received millions of views, and the book version We Should All Be Feminists has become a global bestseller that is still widely read. Through twelve magnificent illustrations by the internationally published Mylo Freeman, the themes from We Should All Be Feminists are addressed in a way appropriate for children of eight years and up. Together with their parents, caretakers or teachers, boys and girls can now get acquainted with the concept of feminism for the first time. Worldwide illustration rights: De Bezige Bij – Worldwide text rights (original and adaptation): Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie/The Wylie Agency Picture book – May 2021 – 32 pages – 23,5 x 28 cm.

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Peter Buwalda Otmar’s Sons Buwalda’s breath-taking masterpiece 145,000 copies sold Shortlisted for the Bookspot Literature Prize 2020 ‘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), Jelenkor (Hungary) – Novel – 605 pages – March 2019 – Full German and Danish translations available, English sample translation available – Selected by the Dutch Foundation for Literature as one of the 10 Books from Holland 42

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Mathijs Deen The Lightship Nominated for the Libris Literature Prize 2021

For the crew aboard the lightship, the work is monotonous, the living quarters cramped and the pay minimal. The men hold watch, chart the weather, note the names of passing ships and keep the light running. During storms the ship jerks at its chain, in thick fog the foghorn blasts, on clear nights the stars are innumerable. And after four weeks the men can go back ashore. The moment they all eagerly await. At the centre of the small community at sea is the cook Lammert, who prepares meals three times a day at fixed hours. Lammert is the most important man on the ship. Food offers consolation and stability in this isolated life. Things carry on as they usually do, until the day he wants to slaughter a young goat for a stew. The arrival of this young, jumpy animal upsets the fixed routine aboard the lightship and puts relationships on edge.

World rights: Thomas Rap – Rights sold: mare Verlag (Germany), Iperborea (Italy) – Novel – 125 pages – September 2020 – Featured in New Dutch Fiction from the Foundation for Dutch Literature – Full German and English sample translation available

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

W.F. Hermans A Guardian Angel Recalls: The Cloud of Unknowing ‘Hermans does a wonderful job tracking Bert’s ethical, moral, and spiritual roller coaster, which fascinatingly mirrors the Dutch Nazi sympathizers and fifth columnists who enabled fascism. This should establish Hermans as a modern Dostoyevsky.’ – Publishers’ Weekly On the eve of World War II, a public prosecutor, upset because his Jewish lover has fled and left him, runs over a young girl by car. She was residing clandestinely in the Netherlands. He is torn between his sorrow at the loss of his girlfriend and the guilt about the accident, which is surrounded by mysteries that he tries to unravel as the world around him collapses. Meanwhile, he is watched over by his guardian angel, who whispers warnings to him, and the Devil, who makes use of the same exhortations. In this highly acclaimed, gripping war-time novel, personally dubbed ‘one of the most beautiful novels that I’ve written’, Willem Frederik Hermans shows that human actions are not purposeful, but amount to a string of randomness and error.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Archipelago (USA/Canada), Pushkin Press (UK /ANZ), Helicon Plus (Russia) – Classic – 416 pages – First publication: 1971 – Full English translation available 44

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Stefan Hertmans The Ascent 55,000 copies sold Nominated for the Libris Literature Prize ‘The Ascent is a brilliant docudrama from the craftsman who previously managed to fuse fact, fiction and autobiography into gold in War and Turpentine and The Convert.’ – Humo 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 a 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. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Harvill Secker (UK), Pantheon (USA/Canada), Text (ANZ), Gallimard (France), Marsilio (Italy), Diogenes (Switzerland), Fraktura (Croatia), Beletrina (Slovenia) – Novel – 352 pages – September 2020 – German and French translation available, English sample translation available

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Helena Hoogenkamp Adoring Louis Claus ‘Youth, adversity, growing up: these are the materials that many literary debuts are made of, but Hoogenkamp stands above the rest for her crisp style and clever dosing.’– **** NRC Handelsblad Adoring Louis Claus is about the thin line between longing and despair, keeping silent and speaking out; a poetic quest for intimacy.

It’s 2003, the summer that Louis Claus goes to school wearing a clown suit and Carla cuts her trousers too short, the summer that her father discovers a tumour in her mother’s breast as they make love and her friend Juicy is expelled from school for cocaine-use. After that summer, they go their separate ways, but years later, after her mother’s death, Carla once again becomes fascinated by Louis, who is now a successful author. Upon returning to her memories, she appears to have misjudged their relationship.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Novel – 212 pages – February 2021 English, German and Spanish sample translation available 46

SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION

Peter Terrin All The Blue Nominated for the ‘Boekenbon’ Literature Prize 2021 ‘Peter Terrin has once again delivered a pitch-perfect book, in its mood and intensity reminiscent of novels by Graham Swift and Ian McEwan.’ – Trouw ‘Terrin describes their love as warm, full and greedy. Their love-making is electrifying (…) It is the way in which he describes the rest, coolly but dramatically, like a sob held in with all one’s might. It tightens itself around your neck like a steel wire.’**** – de Volkskrant Simon is nineteen years old when he walks out in the middle of a lecture and drops out of university. He feels lost and doesn’t know how to relate to the village and the modest world he grew up in. Together with his best friend Marc, he whiles away long hours in the Azzurra, a poolside café in the nearby provincial city. It is there, surrounded by the blue brilliance of the pool lit up at night, that a passionate relationship arises between Simon and Carla Binotto, an Italian bartender twenty years his senior. There are rumours about her troubled past and about John, her boorish husband. In hypnotic prose, Pete Terrin carries the reader back to the late eighties and to Carla and Simon, who each find themselves at a turning point in their lives, facing impossible choices.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Liebeskind (Germany) – Novel – 287 pages – February 2021 – English sample translation available

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION

Laura Jansen We Saw a Light: Reports From Lesbos ‘Freedom isn’t something that I understand, not really. I see it when my passport and papers let me fly and ride. I see it when, at the end of the day, I leave the camp through the gate, on my way to my own house. But freedom is nothing that I have ever lost. I only know that I have it, and that they don’t.’ After an intensive world tour as a singer-songwriter, Laura Jansen comes home to Amsterdam exhausted and with a broken heart. When she hears about refugees arriving at Central Station, she decides to do something. It is 2015 and the refugee crisis is at its peak. She spends evening after evening at the station with others, welcoming and assisting the exhausted and desperate arrivals. Their stories touch her deeply and sketch a clearer and clearer picture of the humanitarian disaster taking place only a few-hour’s flight away. She decides to go to Lesbos for ten days, and stays on the island for two and a half years, devoting her heart and soul to the refugees on the coast and in the camps. Only when she returns home do the aftereffects hit her. Nothing seems to be same. We Saw a Light is a deeply personal and gripping story in which innocent men, women and children are given a face. A book as piercing as it is hopeful, about vigour and humanity.

World rights: Thomas Rap – Non-fiction – 352 pages – May 2021 48

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION

Raoul de Jong Jaguar Man Nominated for the ‘Boekenbon’ Literature Prize Shortlisted for the European Union Literature Prize ‘Jaguarman is a surprisingly rich book. De Jong pulls you into the story, which is full of offshoots and leaps in time and thought. It's incredibly easy to observe through his eyes, surprised and moved, entertained and bewildered. His discoveries become your own.’**** – NRC Handelsblad At the age of twenty-eight, author Raoul de Jong meets his Surinamese father for the first time. They speak alike, move alike and both believe in wonders. Then Raoul’s father tells him a story that lingers in his memory: one of his ancestors, a medicine man, could transform himself into a jaguar. Gripped by this mystery, Raoul decides to investigate in Surinam. The history of the former Dutch colony is one of darkness and slavery, but those who search carefully will also find a great deal of hope and vitality. Raoul is living proof: his ancestors somehow managed to survive. During this quest, in which he acquaints himself with Surinamese writers, thinkers and resistance heroes, he discovers that the power of the jaguar was essential for the country, and comes to understand how much everyone can learn from it. In Jaguar Man, written as an adventure novel, Raoul de Jong presents a beautiful ode to the land of his father. World rights: De Bezige Bij – Rights sold: Perseus (Bulgaria), Buchet Chastel (France) – Non-fiction –256 pages – November 2020 – Featured in New Dutch Non Fiction from the Foundation for Dutch Literature – English sample translation available

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION

Sandra Langereis Erasmus: Life of a Maverick Shortlisted for the Libris History Prize 2021 ‘Ambitious biography turns Erasmus into a man of flesh and blood.’ – Trouw Erasmus is one of the greatest authors of the Netherlands and Belgium, and even all 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 correspondence 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. Erasmus’ life story sheds light on an eventful era: a century of dark humour and brutal violence, of religious fanaticism and the struggle for intellectual freedom. This rich biography makes history’s relevance palpable. Erasmus has never been portrayed as this smart, sharp, brave, angry, scared and – in one word – human. And never before has a biography shone as vivid a spotlight on Erasmus’ day and age. World rights: De Bezige Bij - Biography, full colour illustrations, 702 pages (excl. acknowledgements, footnotes, bibliography & register, 81 pages) - March 2021 – English sample translation available - Featured in Dutch Non Fiction of the Dutch Foundation for Literature 50

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION

Bart Van Loo The Burgundians 250,000 copies sold Shortlisted for the Libris History Prize 2019 Bestseller in Germany and France 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), Mondadori (Italy), Remnin (China) – History – 608 pages, including footnotes, chronology, bibliography, maps, and two full-colour inserts – January 2019 - Full English, German, French and Italian translation available

SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION

Marcia Luyten Máxima Zorreguieta: Motherland How did Queen Máxima become who she is? In what kind of environment was she raised in Argentina? Who influenced her? Which characteristics from her youth can we see in today’s queen, and which did she have to unlearn? And where did life put her to the test? From the moment that Máxima Zorreguieta appears at the Dutch crown prince’s side, she finds herself in the limelight. History teaches us: whoever marries a monarch, cannot expect an easy life. How is it that this Argentine has flourished at an old European court? Fifty years ago, Queen Máxima was born in a country in decline. Argentina had missed its great future and was fleeing into nostalgia. The Argentinian tragedy forces its way into her family when her father joins the military dictatorship. What was self-evident in Maxima’s childhood will leave deep scars on her later life. In Máxima Zorreguieta: Motherland, the first book of a biographical portrait in two parts, Marcia Luyten shows how Queen Máxima has been shaped by the country of her birth. By the big history of a country that dreamed of glory, and by the smaller history of a family bond, great expectations and unconditional friendship. Máxima ventures the crossing from Buenos Aires to Wall Street and the jet-set of Manhattan, but only after a personal struggle. Máxima Zorreguieta’s free life in Manhattan comes to an end on 31 August 1999, when the press reveals she is the Dutch crown prince’s girlfriend. World rights: De Bezige Bij –Rights sold: Planeta (Argentina). Film rights: Millstreet Films – Biography – full colour photographs – 352 pages – April 2021 – English sample translation available 52

PREVIEW

David Van Reybrouck Revolusi 90,000 copies sold Shortlisted for the Libris History Prize 2021 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, especially when Indonesia organized the legendary Bandung Conference in 1955, the first global conference without the West. The whole world had become involved with the Revolusi, and the whole world was changed by it.

World rights: De Bezige Bij – World English rights: Janklow & Nesbit – Rights sold: Suhrkamp (Germany), The Bodley Head (World English), Actes Sud (France), Taurus (Spain), Feltrinelli (Italy), Natur Och Kultur (Sweden), W.A.B. (Poland) – History – 656 pages – November 2020 – English sample translation available 53

TH O M A S R A P

DE BEZIGE BIJ

C A RG O

Mark Beumer* Director De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo

Francien Schuursma Publisher De Bezige Bij

Marjolein Schurink Publisher Cargo

Jasper Henderson* Publisher Thomas Rap

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

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

Suzanne Holtzer Editor-in-chief Dutch literature De Bezige Bij

Katrijn Van Hauwermeiren Editor-in-chief Dutch literature De Bezige Bij

Chris Kooi* Editor translated literature De Bezige Bij; Cargo

Mariska Kortie* Editor non-fiction De Bezige Bij

Merijn Hollestelle Editor Dutch literature De Bezige Bij

Roel van Diepen Editor Thomas Rap

Juliet Jonkers Editor Thomas Rap

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

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

Anne van den Heuvel* Rights department De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo

* In Frankfurt

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Foreign Rights Guide Frankfurt Book Fair 2021

Articles inside

Peter Terrin All The Blue

Helena Hoogenkamp Adoring Louis Claus

Laura Jansen We Saw a Light: Reports From Lesbos

Stefan Hertmans The Ascent

W.F. Hermans A Guardian Angel Recalls: The Cloud of Unknowing

Mathijs Deen The Lightship

Peter Buwalda Otmar’s Sons

Henk Pröpper 27 Beats Per Minute

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Heleen Debruyne The House Friend

Rob van Essen Rescue Swimming

Marcel Möring A Family Walk

Frank Martinus Arion Double Play

Ronald Giphart Night Terror

Jens Meijen The Light Years