De Bezige Bij Foreign Rights Catalogue, London Book Fair 2023

DeBezigeBij TheBusyBee

IRC tables H2 / H3

LONDON BOOK FAIR 2023

To be published in September 2023

Praise on earlier work:

‘The only ones to have achieved the holy grail of the Total Novel in recent years are W.G. Sebald with Austerlitz, J.M. Coetzee with Disgrace and Philip Roth with Everyman. We could add the name Tommy Wieringa to this list.’ Le

Figaro

‘In terms of style and imagery, Wieringa’s best book. Wieringa’s style in The Blessed Rita is more powerful and concentrated than ever. Though you can hear the writer speaking warily through his characters about the new times, in which the animals have disappeared from the pastures, in which the sick are only interested in their smartphones, it doesn’t wallow in nostalgia.'

— Trouw

‘It is superb. It has won the Libris Prize in the Netherlands and, were it eligible, could really shake up the Man Booker. This is a bravura performance. Far closer to Joseph Conrad than one might expect, it makes a case for the saving power of small continuities.’

The Irish Times

TOMMY WIERINGA (b. 1967) is the author of such books as Joe Speedboat (F. Bordewijk Prize), Caesarion (shortlist International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), These Are the Names (Libris Literature Prize), The Death of Murat Idrissi (Longlist Booker International Prize) and The Blessed Rita (Bookspot Literature and Readers Prizes). Thoughts On Our Time, in which Wieringa excels as columnist, was published in 2021. His work has been translated in more than twenty countries.

Tommy Wieringa Nirvana

A grandfather’s past determines a grandson’s present. Together they tell the story of a century in which the world fire blazed like never before.

Who is the man revered within the family as a saint? Willem Adema is considered a visionary hydraulic engineer with a tainted past. He fought for the Germans on the Eastern Front to capture the Caucasus oil fields, but halfway through the war had a change of heart and joined the Resistance. After his prison sentence, he pioneered for the oil industry in Venezuela and played a leading role in the offshore drilling in the North Sea.

His grandson Hugo Adema is a renowned artist whose life stalls after his great love leaves him. To kill time, he returns to his grandparents’ estate, where he grew up, to uncover his now hundredyear-old grandfather Willem’s past. Was his switch to the Resistance genuine, or prompted by opportunism? And what role did he really play on the Eastern Front? Meanwhile, Hugo increasingly views the time he himself lives in as a continuation of his grandfather’s war of conquest by other means. When his former governess dies, his grandfather's lost diaries turn up in her home, shedding a startling new light on his war years. In Nirvana, World War Two connects in grandiose fashion with the combustion era of today. This highly topical novel teaches that fire is a good servant but a bad master.

Praise on earlier work:

‘A fierce, well thought-out indictment of the rat race we call life.’

NRC Handelsblad

‘‘What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.’

The Guardian

‘Bestselling author Paul Verhaeghe has been considered the interpreter of society's unease for years. ’

NRC Handelsblad

PAUL VERHAEGHE is a doctor of clinical psychology and professor emeritus at Ghent University. He is also a practising psychoanalyst. With Love in a Time of Loneliness (1998), The End of Pyschotherapy (2009), Identity (2012), Authority (2015) and Intimacy (2018) he reached a large international readership. He also published the essays On Normality and Other Deviance (2019) and Keep Your Distance, Hold me. In 2021, he looked back on his career in What Brings You Here, a book he co-authored with Sarah Vankersschaever.

Paul Verhaeghe Discontent

A profound analysis of how culture and society affect our mental well-being

Adam Phillips’ psychological expertise meets Paul Mason’s political engagement

A feeling of discontent is part of our humanity. Despite prosperity on all fronts, the unrest in our society is increasing. In this book, Paul Verhaeghe shows that every era has its own sense of discontent, with its typical problems – such as burn-outs, imposter syndrome and fear of being excluded.

How can we characterise our society, in what ways does it define us as individuals, and what discontent results from it? Are there verifiable explanations for this discontent, in the practice of healthcare, education and labour organisation? In Discontent, Paul Verhaeghe opts for a scientifically backed analysis, averse to ideology-based critiques and utopian solutions. In his recognisably smooth and accessible style, he guides us past insights about these times and expectations for our future.

Praise for Napoleon:

‘Master storyteller. Narrative history of the fascinating sort. (...)

Chateaubriand is one of the many fascinating side characters who, despite Napoleon’s overwhelming personality, manage to survive, to thrive and even to flourish in his environment and who are brought marvellously to life by Bart Van Loo. Because Napoleon: The Shadow of the Revolution distinguishes itself from the many Napoleon books in the way in which Van Loo brings the people surrounding Napoleon to life.’

Knack

‘A delightful page-turner that everyone has to read’ de Volkskrant

‘Swirling, a page-turner. With pithy sentences, the writer manages to set both people and situations down at once. All of the figures who step onto the stage alongside Napoleon, and in particular his ministers Talleyrand and Fouché, come alive on Van Loo’s pages. The reader has first row seats to the snake pit that was Paris in the years after the Revolution.’

NRC Handelsblad

BART VAN LOO (b. 1973) is the bestselling author of The Burgundians and has developed a rare dual talent over the years as writer and entertainer. With his mini-lectures in television programmes he has become known to a broad public, but first and foremost Van Loo is a born writer, author of the universally praised France Trilogy (2011), Chanson (2011) and the bestseller Napoleon (2014).

Bart Van Loo Napoleon

The Shadow of the Revolution

From the international bestselling author of The Burgundians of which 330,000 copies have been sold worldwide

Napoleon fascinates us He is one of the most influential figures in all of history And yet Napoleon also raises an enormous number of questions. How could an ordinary Corsican manage to convince the French people that he was the man they were waiting for? Who was the emperor who fought his way through Europe, leaving millions of victims in his wake, before stranding in a boggy meadow near Waterloo? Bart Van Loo goes searching for the man behind the myth and finds answers in the engrossing and extremely turbulent years of the French Revolution, when the Old World gave way and everything changed. The shadow of the Revolution will always hang over Napoleon.

The French Revolution and Napoleon: the two most captivating Homeric stories in Western history in one sagacious and compelling tale. In the richly illustrated Napoleon: The Shadow of the Revolution, Bart Van Loo sketches an unparalleled portrait of the man and his time.

World

492 pages • November 2019 • English sample translation available

Table of contents

* Introduction * Sweat * Saliva * Earwax

* Blood * Menstrual blood * Pus * Urine

* Semen * Milk * Tears

Excerpt from Blood, Sweat and Tears: Urine

The abundant application of urine was not limited to agriculture, the textile industry, medicine, art, and science. The fluid could also be used for many daily household purposes. Good housekeepers mixed urine with ashes and used that as a lotion to prevent diaper rash on their babies' bottoms. For gleaming white teeth, they brushed with their own liquid waste. The Romans used urine to treat sores, burns, and anal infections, according to Pliny the Elder (1st century CE). Throughout ancient and medieval times, urine was an accepted treatment for many other ailments as well. Insect bites? Urine. Wounds? Urine. Gangrene, scabies, eczema, gout? Cover with warm urine.

RUBEN VERWAAL (b. 1986) is a historian and curator at Erasmus MC hospital. He specialises in the history of medical science and conducted his PhD research on the history of the perception of body fluids.

Ruben Verwaal Blood, Sweat and Tears

A history of the fluid body

The human body leaks. It sweats, spits, pees, poops, bleeds and squirts. It is precisely this fluidity that is essential to our life and health. Without saliva, we cannot swallow and digest our food. Without clotting blood no healing wounds. Without vaginal fluid and sperm no reproduction. Yet we have a problematic relationship with our body fluids: we are quick to find pus, poo and snot dirty and unhygienic. But this has not always been the case.

In Blood, Sweat and Tears, Ruben Verwaal uses historical sources to show how bodily fluids were perceived in earlier times and how they were used in everyday life for all sorts of things.

World rights: Thomas Rap

304 pages

• Non-fiction

• April 2023

• Black and white illustrations,

• English sample translation available

Astaggeringpersonaltestimonyofaphilosopherwhospentten yearsinthegulag

'Icannotandwillnotmerelydescribethedead;thereweretoomany.ButI do have a duty to the people who died around me there, who were also “prematurelyreleased”,toremember.Afterall:Iamalive,andtheyarelong gone, and they were just as young as me, and just like the others and just like me they wanted to live. They were not granted that. Somewhere, fate shovedthemintoanalleywithnowayout.’

PraiseforAftertheLiberation:

'BarbaraSkarga'snotesonherimprisonmentreadlikeanightmare,butnot inaspectacular,sentimentalway Rationalityundoubtedlysavedher' *****deStandaard

‘After the Liberation is a luminous, honest and now glowingly translated work. Gradually, the richness of her thinking reveals itself.(...) Philosophising after the concentration camp – that in itself is a mindboggling tour de force already; the lucidity and above all the gentleness shedemonstratesinherworkmakeitmagnificent.Herwritingissolight,so compelling and humane that it almost makes one forget the horror and wickednessshesufferedandwitnessed.’ ****deVolkskrant

BARBARA SKARGA (1919-2009) is the most important Polish philosopher of the 20th century. She was born in Warsaw, but grew up on an estate near Vilnius. During World War II, she joined the resistance. In September 1944, she was arrested by the Red Army and sentenced to 10 years of hard labour. After her release, she was still forced to work in a kolkhoz, so it was not until 1956 that she was able to pick up the threads of her life in Poland. She graduated, obtained her PhD and worked as a professor all her life. She actively interfered in public debate and was involved in the Polish solidarity movement Solidarność. She left behind an extensive philosophical oeuvre.

Barbara Skarga After the Liberation Notes on the Gulag 1946 - 1956

Rediscovered memoir, introduction by Alicja Gescinska

A sharp commentary on every totalitarian system

The end of World War II is in the air. You are twenty-five, the sun is shining. You put on a light summer dress because it promises to be a beautiful day. Then you are captured by the Russian army and interrogated endlessly, and after a mock trial you end up in the gulag camps as an enemy of the Soviet Union for ten years.

This was the fate of Barbara Skarga. She made a name for herself with philosophical essays and books, but one of her most important works long went unnoticed. In 1985, she published her personal testimony of her life in the gulag camps under a pseudonym. After the Liberation is a historically valuable and topical book; a timeless, poignant account of the difficulty and necessity of remaining human in inhuman conditions.

World rights: De Bezige Bij

November 2022

• History

• 432 pages, including photo-section

• Earlier published in Poland (Znak, 2008) and France

(Table Ronde, 2000)

• English sample translation available

•

Praise for The Battle for Bali:

'The Battle for Bali is more than a list of violent acts. Hoek also tells a larger story about how, with great reluctance, the Netherlands parted with its colony in the East. […] Hoek has managed to save a great deal of information from oblivion. In doing so, she truly contributes to our knowledge about the recent past which has yet to fully make it into our collective consciousness. Potentially the most important history book of the year. ’

**** NRC Handelsblad

‘Anne-Lot Hoek is one of those rare historians who successfully combines in-depth research and oral history with high readability. What an achievement! What an elegance!’

David Van Reybrouck

ANNE-LOT HOEK is an author and historian. She writes for NRC Handelsblad, Vrij Nederland, De Groene Amsterdammer and de lage landen and appears on national radio and tv. As a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam, she received the 2020 ASH Valorisation Prize for her work on Indonesia. The Battle for Bali is her debut, was winner of Best History Book of the Month on Radio 1 and shortlisted for the Libris History Prize.

Anne-Lot Hoek The Battle for Bali

Imperialism, resistance and independence

1846-1950

Astaggering,incisivedecolonisationhistory

ShortlistedfortheLibrisHistoryPrize2022

Indonesia's independence is irreversible – the Republic of Indonesia has become a reality. In 1946 the Netherlands occupies Bali, the island that is internationally known as a paradise, where the State of East Indonesia is established. This state is to be a paragon of democracy, but from the very start the authorities ruthlessly enforce the population’s loyalty.

The Battle for Bali is a history of the unknown violent guerrilla war which erupted on the island just after World War II. It is a shocking story of oppression and hidden terror camps, but also of fierce resistance, friendship and betrayal that is inextricably linked to the imperial past, but also to the heart of Dutch decolonisation politics.

Using over 120 interviews on Bali and in the Netherlands, extensive archival and field research, letters and memoirs, Anne-Lot Hoek pervades into the very core of the colonial system. She presents a layered and groundbreaking picture of a brutal independence struggle.

Praise for What We Have in Common:

‘With What We Have in Common, Lijster joins the search for an alternative to the failing neoliberalism that is ruining the planet and wrecking society.'

Humanistisch Verbond

Excerpt from What We Have in Common:

'In 1990 Elinor Ostrom, an American economist and the first woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, published a book called Governing the Commons, about collectively-managed domains or resources that were neither privately nor publicly owned. Such ‘ commons ’ have a long tradition, and in many cities and villages you can see echoes of them in street names. In fact they go right back to the earliest human social structures, when food, tools and knowledge were shared and collectively managed. In the Middle Ages, ‘ commons ’ referred to common land on which people could graze their livestock, or forests where they could gather firewood.

But over the course of the modern era, with the emergence and rise of capitalism, collective rights to these commons were gradually taken away, and they became private property (a historical process referred to as the ‘enclosure of the commons’). As a result, commons came to be seen as something of the past.’

THIJS LIJSTER (b. 1981) is an associate professor of Philosophy of Art and Culture. He co-wrote Among Philosophers (2005) with Jan Sietsma and was co-editor of The New German Philosophy (2014) and The Art of Criticism (2015). His book The Great Leap Inward (2016) was shortlisted for the Socrates Cup and awarded the Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature’s essay prize. Other titles include Look, Taste, Think (2019, Socrates Cup shortlist) and People Unite! (2019).

Thijs Lijster What We Have in Common A Philosophy of the Commons

What binds us in a world where our common property is increasingly dispossessed and destroyed?

The economic crisis, pandemic and climate catastrophe have put a dent in our neoliberal self-image as autonomous individuals. Calls for more ' sense of community' are everywhere. But what actually unites us? That question is usually answered in terms of ' norms and values' or 'national identity', and nowadays even bluntly in terms of ethnicity or race.

Inspired by a wide range of critical thinkers, Thijs Lijster finds an alternative in the tradition of thinking about the so-called commons, or shared resources. The commons are shared resources that everyone can use without being anyone ' s property. They used to be forests or fields, but knowledge, culture, public space in the city or the internet can also be seen as such a common.

Capitalism threatens the commons and keeps turning them into private property. Lijster shows why it is important that we treat crucial aspects of our lives such as living, caring and learning not as commodities, but as commons. Because without commons, we have nothing in common.

Shortlisted for the Socrates Cup Prize 2023

A personal, philosophical, warm and at times humorous quest to answer a complex question

Excerpt from Sometimes I Want A Child:

‘I didn’t start out doubtful.

Once, I wanted a child.

Once, I was pregnant. That went wrong.

Sometime after, I lost my fortitude.

Since I didn’t want to end up doubtful, I couldn’t help but study and understand that doubt. Sometimes, I do want a child. Is sometimes enough?’

JANTINE JONGEBLOED (b. 1987) works as a freelance journalist. Her investigation and essay Who Put My Naked Photos Online? (2021) in Volkskrant Magazine caused a stir and was nominated for De Loep Award for best investigative journalism. In 2021, she debuted with a book of the same name, after which she was awarded the Bep Slechte Prize, the Sex & Media Prize and the Golden Freelancer Award. Sometimes I Want A Child is her literary debut.

Jantine Jongebloed Sometimes I Want A Child

An intimate, incisive search for the answer to the question: do I want a child?

Once she was certain: I want to be a mother. But after a few attempts, doubt suddenly sets in. Jantine Jongebloed’s desire for children turns from a rippling constant into a fluctuating troublemaker. How do you choose between parenthood and a life without children? Can a child enrich and impoverish at the same time? What does a woman who does not become a mother miss exactly – and how great is the sacrifice of having a child? How do you make an autonomous choice? What if you regret it? What if time chooses for you?

Sometimes I Want A Child is a personal yet universal story about fertility, motherhood, sexuality, physicality, connection, meaning and womanhood. Jantine Jongebloed explores the conflict between the desire for freedom and independence on the one hand, and intimacy and closeness on the other, seemingly directly opposed. The result is a moving and recognisable quest for a life that is right for you.

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Rightssold:

BuchetChastel(France)

Genre:Non-fiction

Pages:256

Published:November2022

Englishsampletranslation available

Praise for Jaguar Man:

‘Jaguar Man 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

'Written two years before the Netherlands' 'apology' at the end of 2022 for practicing slavery for two hundred and fifty years, Jaguar Man finally paints a portrait of a world-country.'

Le Monde

RAOUL DE JONG (b. 1984) writes for various newspapers and has published eight books. In 2013 The Greatness of It All was published and received the best Rotterdam Book Award and an honourable mention from the Bob den Uyl Prize. His book Jaguar Man appeared in 2020 and was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, the Boekenbon Literature Prize, the Boon Award and the E. du Perron Prize. His book Conversations with Grandpa was published in 2022.

Raoul de Jong Boto Banja

or: The Secret Society of Dancing Writers

The Book Week Essay 2023

One morning Raoul de Jong wakes up with the realization: I’ve got to sail. He finds a ship that can take him from the Dominican Republic to Curaçao, a route once travelled by many enslaved people in the opposite direction. De Jong follows in the footsteps

Anton de Kom (author of We Slaves of Suriname, 1934) and his contemporaries. They, mostly descendants of enslaved people, crossed seas and oceans as free people in the first half of the last century to claim their place in the world.

Slowly, De Jong discerns the contours of a secret society of dancing writers who refused to be constrained by the role the world had devised for them. They were mischievous loners who, if one looks closely, are not alone but part of a great network of stories, rituals, histories and dreams. What can we learn from these dancing writers about what it means to be human?

Praise for She.:

'She. is a rare handsome debut novel, masterfully written: subtle, poetic, true to life. A book with a message. A manifesto, you could safely say. '

Trouw

'An intense, gripping novel that won't leave you alone for a very long time.'

— het Parool

'With Neuville, the Dutch-language writers' guild is expanded with someone who dares to take both substantive and stylistic risks.'

de Standaard

'She. seems written at breakneck speed, as if the words had long been simmering, because that's how it reads. You fly through it, to quickly, now, immediately discover how it ends. Only on a second, slower read do you sense the deeper meaning.'

de Morgen

MAAIKE NEUVILLE (b. 1983) is a theatre and film actress based in Belgium and the Netherlands. She had a leading role in the popular series Red Light. She writes and creates plays about the virtually endless possibilities of love. In 2012 she graduated as a filmmaker, and since then has been creating short fiction films and film poems. She. is her debut novel.

Maaike Neuville She.

An exceptional debut about power dynamics where the role of perpetrator and victim are obscured

Thirty-nine-year-old actress Ada Peeters takes the train to the city where she will take the stage that evening with a monologue she wrote herself. Memories of the elderly theatre teacher with whom she had an affair as a student involuntarily well up inside her. It is his city where she will perform. Even on stage, as she comes face to face with the packed auditorium, there is no stopping the furious pace with which the deeply tucked away images of encounters with married men, teachers and other figures of authority surface. The performance is followed by a return trip with a mysterious cab driver that causes Ada to descend even deeper into a past she never really wanted to face in the first place.

She. is an urgent novel about intimacy, about boundaries being crossed even when there is mutual consent, about speaking up and finding confidence in the necessity of telling your own story.

‘I feel like playing outside, on the waterfront, but have to comfort my mother. I light a cigarette for her, he won’t come, he’s stood us up before. I don’t know how long we waited, a day, maybe two, and then the liberating call. My mother slams the phone on the hook, and cries: “Why the hell do men exist?” I am seven, or eight, I want to show her that we exist, I will make her happy.’

Praise for previous work:

‘Child Soldier is more than a good read or a well constructed family history (…) A literary pearl. The best of this writer thus far.’

‘This novel is bursting with wonderful scenes, the sentences are always worthwhile, the findings striking, strange and infectious. Through small interventions, the author always manages to transcend the ordinary, to seek out the boundaries of propriety or to make a point of it.’

De Groene Amsterdammer

‘Oscar van den Boogaard constructs a compelling, delightful and always surprising universe.’

Le Monde

OSCAR VAN DEN BOOGAARD (b. 1964) grew up in Suriname and the Netherlands. His novel Dentz (1990) was the beginning of an extensive body of work including Julia’s Glorious Domain (1995) and Love’s Death (1999), which were nominated for major literary awards. In 2018 he published Child Soldier, his first unapologetically autobiographical novel.

Oscar van den Boogaard In the Name of the Son

There are two fathers in Oscar’s life – finally, after half a century, the insight arrives that he does not have to choose

It’s useless to try to deny it, which is what Oscar van den Boogaard did for fifty years. Things seemingly went well for him. Without him noticing it, however, it exhausted him. It was a permanent assault on his conscience. ‘Only when his name crossed my lips could I begin to look life straight in the eye. ’ Looking back, it seemed he had always seen with only one eye. And had stood on one leg. His loved ones were not surprised. Apparently it had been said without words. The puzzle pieces fell into place. They didn’t talk about it much. For Oscar, though, it was surprising to find that the only one who had struggled with it was himself. And for the first time, he found the words to write about it unflinchingly.

Excerpt from The Hollow:

‘Just calm down; what’s the very worst that could happen? That someone would catch me. That I would have to explain what I'm doing here. And then? I’d manage. Hi, I'm Kasja. I’m screwing the man of the house twice a week. That's right, Charles Ubbink. Yes, him. So, I came to see how he lives. His shoes are size 12.5, and he uses Knorr seasoning salt with MSG. No, nothing special, I’m just leaving.

Very carefully, I fall back onto the bed, just for a second; I hold my stomach in to reduce the weight on the duvet cover and I tense my thighs to exert less pressure on the linens. The mattress is firm. Probably an Auping, or what's that other one? Hästens. The Battle of Hästens. I am slowly sucked into the bed, his mattress embraces me in a safe cocoon, I can't resist, but I do have to relax. First, my legs, then my hands, then the rest.’

Praise for previous work:

‘Van der Haar skilfully manipulates her readers.' — Trouw

'Her style is confident and sometimes funny, full of sense. ' Harper's

Bazaar

LAURA VAN DER HAAR (b. 1982) is archeologist and the author of several novels, A Week or Four (2020, nominated for the Libris Prize for Literature), an essay collection Running Loose (2019) and the non-fiction book Rooswijk 1740 (2021), among others. She won the Dutch Poetry Slam Championship. The Hollow is her first novel with De Bezige Bij.

Laura van der Haar The Hollow

Mystery surrounds a neglected relationship – a dazzling novel about obsessions, undercurrents and nature taking revenge

Kasja and Lennart have been together for so long that their relationship has become habitual. Everything is routine, and since his sister’s accident, Lennart can’t muster much more than that. His sister has fallen from a tree twenty-three feet high and is in a coma. Rumour has it that it was a suicide attempt, but Lennart knows she was onto something, something sinister in the forest floor, among the roots and the underground fungal network. As Lennart roams the forest looking for clues, Kasja loses herself in a torrid affair with Charles Ubbink, a real estate developer who is nothing like Lennart. They repeatedly meet in an abandoned vacation park which Ubbink wants to convert into a luxury resort but which currently is overgrown by nature.

With The Hollow, Laura van der Haar has written an unputdownable novel. Her language effervesces and sparkles as with tangible pleasure she racks up the tension –until the chilling apotheosis in the forest.

Excerpt from Definition of Love:

'I already love you, you may not have a heart yet, you ' re living in mine and yet I already love you. '

Praise for A Thousand Fathers:

'Dark, magical and frenzled. A welcome new voice.'

— de Volkskrant

'The text undulates and flows. A book with a tone all of its own - a flight from dark reality to bright and sovereign literature.'

— Die Welt

NHUNG DAM (b. 1984) works as a theatre maker, actress, writer and columnist. Dam has written several plays that have been translated into German, English, Czech and Estonian. She performs her solo shows in major theatres and at theatre festivals. Dam regularly appears in TV series and films. In 2017, she published her debut novel A Thousand Fathers, which was awarded the Best Groningen Book Award 2018 and nominated for the Dioraphte Literatour Prize. It was published in Germany by Ullstein Verlag.

Nhung Dam Definition of Love

On the magnificent rediscovery of life

All seems well with actress Rose, but shortly after discovering that she is pregnant, her lover abandons her. Just when she needs friendship the most, she finds herself surrounded by people who are preoccupied with their own lives. Does she have the courage to choose for herself, or does she have to go back across the river to the violent environment where her Vietnamese parents are trying to sustain themselves as boat refugees? Back to the chip shop she knows no one escapes in one piece.

Nhung Dam presents a compelling, painful love story against the backdrop of swirling New Orleans. This is a story about relationships, friendship, origins, art and women ' s right to self-determination. Once again Nhung Dam proves herself as a powerful and idiosyncratic storyteller.

Heirloom is based on letters and documents from the author's family archive

Excerpt from Heirloom:

'Maatje, my mother in Java. She died,’ my grandfather said, holding up the letter. For a moment, I wonder if he is aware of the drama of that moment. Maria staggers, clutching at the bed’s metal footboard. Her knuckles are white, her face a grimace. ‘Your mother in Java?’ Her breathing accelerates. ‘Wasn’t she dead for a long time already?’ My grandfather stares ahead, silent.'

— Margriet

CARMEN VAN GEFFEN is a Dutch writer and artist who lives and works in Flanders. Heirloom is her debut novel.

'A confrontational quest.'

‘A gripping debut novel.’ Nouveau

Carmen van Geffen Heirloom

A compelling novel about trauma, shame, loss and betrayal

Anton was born in the Dutch East Indies as the child of a colonial planter and a native njai. When he is ten, his father dies and he must leave Java to live with his uncle and aunt in the Netherlands. He leaves his mother and his childhood behind forever.

A lifetime later, Anton awaits the end in a Dutch nursing home. He instructs his granddaughter Ana during one of her visits to find his keris pusaka, an heirloom from his Indonesian past. During the search for the keris, Ana not only uncovers her grandfather’s life, but also comes to see her own life under a magnifying glass. Heirloom is a novel about (de)colonisation within a family, intergenerational trauma, shame, loss and betrayal.

For the readers of Philip Kerr

Praise for Mussert's Shadow:

‘Anyone who finishes Mussert's Shadow can’t help but conclude that he has delivered a rock-solid debut thriller. And though we don’t really do comparisons, one keeps getting the feeling that for this book he took good note of the late Philip Kerr and his unforgettable protagonist Bernie Gunther.’

**** Thrillzone

‘Kuipers demonstrates how from historical facts and characters one can make a thrilling, intelligent and witty book.’

NRC Handelsblad

JOHN KUIPERS (b. 1955) worked as a journalist at the Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau, the largest news agency in the Netherlands, for almost four decades. He has written, among other books, The Spirit of the Game, a biography of chess player Jan Timman. Mussert’s Shadow is his first thriller with the unreliable chief inspector Charlie Swieninck as lead character. The next part of the series, Göring ´ s Deceit, will be published this summer.

John Kuipers Mussert's Shadow

Historical thriller set in the Netherlands during the occupation

He is unconventional, impatient and exceedingly tall. He is also scared of dogs, a bad shot and equipped with a good sense of humour. Chief inspector Charlie Swieninck is the head of the Special Crimes Bureau, and must deal with the German occupiers, who slowly but surely are asserting their authority within the The Hague police.

On 29 June 1940, a day of national resistance, Charlie is summoned after a murder at the Hollands Spoor train station. The victim is Marnix Maas, an important Dutch National Socialist juridical counsellor. The investigation inevitably leads to the heavyweights within the Party, including Rost van Tonningen, Feldmeijer and naturally Anton Mussert, the leader. Meanwhile, the Party puts pressure on Charlie to find the perpetrator somewhere else.

World rights: Cargo • Crime series • 381 pages • April 2022 •

Every year of the war will have its own book

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Genre: Novel

Pages: 166

Published: August 2022

English sample translation available

'Highly intriguing and wonderful.'

het Parool

'A puzzle, a pageturner and poetry all at once. '

*****NRC Handelsblad

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

Rising Literary Star of 2023 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 young baby 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 off your feet.

Nikki Dekker deepdeepblue

Literary Talent of 2023 de Volkskrant

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.

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.

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Genre: Novel

Pages: 300

Published: May 2022

English sample translation and German material available

Nikki Dekker explores what the creatures of the deep can teach us about love and identity

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

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Rightssold:

Colibri(Bulgaria)

ChinaTranslationand

PublishingHouse(China)

Fraktura(Croatia)

Dobrovský(CzechRep.)

Gutkind(Denmark)

KustantamoS&S(Finland)

Gallimard(France)

btb-Verlag(Germany)

Libri(Hungary)

NeriPozza(Italy)

Marginesy(Poland)

PushkinPress(UK/ANZ)

HarperCollins/HarperVia (USA/Canada)

Genre:Novel

Pages:384

Published:Nov2021

Fulltranslationsavailablein severallanguages

Anne Eekhout Mary

Rights sold in thirteen territories

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

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.

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Genre: Autofiction

Pages: 107

Published: Sept. 2022

English sample translation available

Featured in Dutch Fiction and Dutch Non-Fiction of the Dutch Foundation for Literature

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

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ActesSud(France)

Genre:Novel

Pages:224

Published:August2022

Englishsampletranslation available

About the untameable power of love and the inevitability of loss

Peter Terrin The Event

Shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2023

‘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

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.

Jeroen Theunissen

I = Carthographer

I = Cartographer is a brilliant attempt to come to grips with our rapidly changing world

When Jeroen Theunissen was about twenty years old, he found a map of Europe in a travel shop. It was covered with thick purple lines marking long-distance hiking trails. Years later, when the author encountered a bout of melancholy, panic attacks and depression and felt trapped in an unhappy marriage, he left behind everyone and everything – including his two children – to start a six-month walk from South-West Ireland to the Bosporus. In so doing, Jeroen Theunissen was following in the tracks of the British Patrick Leigh Fermor, who had travelled by foot in 1933 from the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands to Constantinople, straight through a Europe at a pivotal moment – Adolf Hitler had recently assumed power. The Europe through which Theunissen walked faces numerous problems, including climate change, nationalism and a refugee crisis.

I = Cartographer is many books in one. It's an account of a hiking journey. An attempt to grasp our rapidly changing world. The story of a man who runs away from responsibilities, only to return to try to create a home for his children.

World rights: De Bezige Bij

Genre: Novel

Pages: 428

Published: May 2022

‘The best book I read this year. '

David Van Reybrouck

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

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Garamond(CzechRep.)

TurbineForlag(Denmark)

LeBruitduMonde(France)

KanonVerlag(Germany)

Göncöl(Hungary)

CappelenDam(Norway)

WAB(Poland)

CasaCărţiideŞtiinţă (Romania)

Genre:Novel

Pages:352

Published:Nov.2021

Englishsynopsisandsample

translationavailable

Lisa Weeda Aleksandra

Shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2022

Winner of the Bronze Owl Award 2022

Literary Talent of 2022 de Volkskrant

60,000 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 greatgrandfather 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.

C.C.S. Crone Stipendium Prize Winner 2020

Gijs Wilbrink The Animals

'In Gijs Wilbrink's thunderous debut novel, you can feel the lurking gaze of rural village life poking through. (...) It is a novel to be uncomplicatedly excited about.'

**** NRC Handelsblad

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.’

A fantastic hybrid of Breaking Bad and Joe Speedboat

Worldrights:ThomasRap

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Ullstein(Germany)

BunkerBooks(Spain)

Genre:Novel

Pages:400

Published:Nov2022

Englishsample

translationandfive-star

translatedreviewavailable

25,000 copies sold

Featured in Dutch Fiction of the Dutch Foundation for Literature

Worldrights:ThomasRap

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Coppenrath(Germany)

Genre:Non-fiction

Pages:80

Published:Feb2022

FullEnglishtranslation available

The ultimate gift for every retiree and anyone who likes a good laugh

Youp van 't Hek & Marije Tolman Oceans of Time

A Handbook for Every Retiree

'A book that crackles with fun and beauty.'

NRC Handelsblad

'[Marije and Youp] make a perfect duo in their take on the subject matter.'

***** Dagblad van het Noorden

'A feast for the eyes. ' **** het Nieuwsblad

24,000 copies sold

You've stopped working. Your career has ended. That means you ' re retired. But then what? You have all the time in the world! But what will you do with it all? Youp van 't Hek, together with illustrator Marije Tolman, has light-hearted answers to these tough questions. A book chock full of tips and wisdom to make the life of the unemployed retiree as pleasant as possible.

‘The retirement party. You know everyone. You know them too well. Way too well. And they’re all there. Bob, that snake who spent years angling for your job. He hates your guts and always whispered the most awful things about you. Look at him. He can barely hide his relief.’

Jurriën Hamer Why Bad Guys Have Bad Luck

A new philosophy of free will

Winner of the Socrates Cup Prize 2022

Featured in the Dutch Non-Fiction of the Dutch Foundation for Literature

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.

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. '

Author Rutger Bregman

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

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Diogenes(Switzerland)

Genre:Currentaffairs

Pages:221

Published:Oct2022

Englishsample

translationavailable

What can we say about our own time?

Stefan Hertmans Shifts

'A sample of an essay written with a delicately literary pen, in which each chapter shines like a shining gem to us in these dark times.' de Volkskrant

'Erudite, adventurous and lucid reflections on climate, democracy or identity, among other things.' De Morgen

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.

Lotte Jensen War Against the Water A Cultural History

Featured in Dutch Non-Fiction of the Dutch Foundation for Literature

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

Genre:Literary non-fiction

Pages: 232

Published:Sept. 2022

Full English translation available

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

'A book full of subtle, precise research, written in a pleasantly light tone.’

NRC Handelsblad

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Rightssold:

Simon&Schuster(World English)

HoffmannundCampe (Germany)

Codice(Italy)

Typotex(Hungary)

AcrossPublishingCo. (Korea)

Otwarte(Poland)

Univers(Romania)

Genre:Popularscience

Pages:352

Published:Sept.2022

Englishsample

translationavailable

We Are Our Hormones Max Nieuwdorp

'He intersperses the latest scientific findings with stories about patients, as well as derailed hormones in world leaders and biblical figures.' NRC Handelsblad

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

Zin Magazine

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.

David Van Reybrouck Revolusi

Shortlisted for the Libris History Prize 2021

110,000 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.

Worldrights:DeBezigeBij

Excl.WorldEnglish:Janklow&

Nesbit

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Siltala(Finland)

ActesSud(France)

Suhrkamp(Germany)

Gramedia(Indonesia)

Feltrinelli(Italy)

W.A.B.(Poland)

Taurus(Spain)

NaturOchKultur(Sweden)

TheBodleyHead(UK)

Norton(USA)

Genre:History

Pages:656

Published:Nov.2020

Fulltranslationsavailablein severallanguages

Documentary:Revolutiein

Indonesië(SavageFilm,2021)

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