DE BEZIGE BIJ
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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
