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