Foreign Rights Guide London Book Fair 2017
De Bezige Bij The Busy Bee You’ll find us at the irc, tables 25p & 25q
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FOREIGN RIGHTS GUIDE LONDON BOOK FAIR 2017 Tommy Wieringa Erwin Mortier Kees van Beijnum Nhung Dam Sytske van Koeveringe Allard Schröder Michel Maas Koen Peeters A.F.Th. van der Heijden
NEW LITERARY FICTION The Death of Murat Idrissi …………………………………........2 On Love and Death. A Parting …………………………………..4 The Beautiful Season ……………………………………………6 A Thousand Fathers……………………………………………...8 It’s Monday Today……………………………………………...10 The Beautiful Sleeper…………………………………………...12 Commander Rabbit……………………………………………..14 The People Healer ……………………………………………...16 By Force………………………………………………………...18
Margriet de Moor Gerard Reve
MODERN CLASSICS Sleepless Night………………………………………………….22 The Evenings……………………………………………………24
David Van Reybrouck & Mohamed El Bachiri Dyab Abou Jahjah Wouter van Noort Martin Bons Chris de Stoop Jolande Withuis
LITERARY NON-FICTION A Jihad for Love….…………………………………………….26
A Case for Radicalisation ……………………………………... 28 Is Anybody There? How the Smartphone Rules Our Lives…….30 The Art of Sprinting …………………………………………....32 Ex-Reporter……………………………………………………..34 Juliana. Queen in a Man’s World……………………………….36
Corine Hartman Roel Janssen
COMMERCIAL FICTION Seeping Poison………………………………………………….38 All Is Lost….……………………………………………………40
Marcel Möring Stefan Hertmans Jeroen Olyslaegers
SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION Eden…………………………………………………………….42 The Convert…………………………………………………….43 Will……………………………………………………………..44
Donald Nolet Anita Terpstra
SUCCESSFUL TITLES COMMERCIAL FICTION The Devil’s Handwriting.………………………………………45 Together………………………………………………………...46
Ignaas Devisch David Van Reybrouck
SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION Restlessness, In Defense of an Immoderate Life. ……………...47 Against Elections……………………………………………….48
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‘Wieringa drives up the tension of a thriller in light,
smoothly rolling sentences which seem to play no part in the atrocities they describe.’ **** DE VOLKSKRANT ‘The new Tommy Wieringa soon changes from a road
trip
novel into a nightmare.’**** DE STANDAARD Press on These Are The Names: 'Structurally sound and highly
intelligent. Wieringa will make you think and keep you reading eagerly to the final page.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
TOMMY WIERINGA (b. 1967) is the author of the best-selling novels Joe Speedboat (F. Bordewijk Prize 2006), Little Caesar, shortlisted for the IMPAC Literary Award 2013) and These Are the Names. Published in 2012, These Are the Names was awarded the Golden Owl Reader Prize, the Libris Literature Prize and the Golden Inktaap (a youth prize) and was shortlisted for the Premio Strega Europeo and the Gregor von Rezzori Prize. His work has been published in more than fifteen countries and has garnered praise both at home and abroad.
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Tommy Wieringa The Death of Murat Idrissi A tale of longing and opportunism, recklessness and death The ferry from Tangier to Algeciras, a fierce wind blows through the Gibraltar Strait. In the hold of the ship, hidden in a car boot, a young man dies. Soon afterwards, two young MoroccanDutch women enter Spain with the dead stowaway in their car. The land stretches out before them, vast and empty. On either side of the asphalt lies the desert. What started as a light-hearted adventure has now become their fate. In 2004 Tommy Wieringa attended a court case where he took down the account which forms the basis for The Death of Murat Idrissi. Hundreds of anonymous corpses are found every year along the Spanish motorways, belonging to those who have failed to survive the journey over. The Death of Murat Idrissi describes the fate of one of them, as well as that of two daughters of migrants, who feel like foreigners, both in their parents’ home country and in the Netherlands.
Translation rights: De Bezige Bij. Publisher: Hollands Diep - Option publishers: Hanser (Germany), Scribe (UK, ANZ), Actes Sud (France), Iperborea (Italy), Libri (Hungary), Edhasa (Argentina), Tiderne Skifter (Denmark), Brombergs (Sweden), Solbitkit (South-Korea), Al Arabi (Egypt). North American rights are handled for Bezige Bij by Inkwell - Novel - 126 pages - March 2017 – English sample translation available 3
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‘On Love and Death. A Parting is more than a sublime
homage to an important writer and his spouse. It is also a reverie on how inept we are at dealing with mortality and death.’ CUTTING EDGE ‘On Love and Death. A Parting is a long, meandering reverie on death, sorrow and grief, but especially on love, which can sometimes be stifling and sometimes liberating but is unique to each individual. Mortier’s quest for words is so personal that everyone will recognise something of themselves.’ DE STANDAARD ERWIN MORTIER (b. 1965) made his mark in 1999 with his debut novel Marcel, which was awarded multiple prizes, was nominated for the most important literary awards and has been published in seven languages. His novel While the Gods Were Sleeping won him the renowned AKO Literature Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2015. Stammered Songbook, received unanimous praise, and won the 2013 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in the category essay. Five of his major works have been published in English by Pushkin Press.
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Erwin Mortier On Love and Death. A Parting Never before has death been approached so sensuously ‘I increasingly think of them as animals, beautiful, shy animals. If we do not drive the dead from the chambers of our souls, they remain. We must banish them in order to be able to welcome them into our memories as what they have become: disembodied loved ones who once existed but are now gone for good. That temporary exile is necessary in order to guarantee their return.’ In On Love and Death. A Parting Erwin Mortier puts this into practice sublimely, raising the stakes high. The book follows two dear friends to the final borders where death is to be found. Just in time he cuts himself loose, in order to allow them to appear again on paper: under his pen they return as powerful characters.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Memoir - 104 pages - February 2017 – English sample translation available 5
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Enough ingredients for a compelling and heartrending
drama in this wonderful novel.’ MARGRIET ‘Nicely balanced novel which shows how vulnerable individuals are.’ HET PAROOL Press on Sacrifice: ‘Characters who will steal your heart. […] There are books that radiate self-confidence from the very first page, permeated with concentration, control and a kind of maturity.’**** NRC HANDELSBLAD
KEES VAN BEIJNUM (b. 1954) is the author of successful novels including Poet on the Zeedijk, which was published in 1995 and nominated for the AKO Literature Prize, while the movie based upon it won the Golden Calf – the Dutch equivalent of the Academy Awards. The Arrangement, published in 1998, was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize, and the film version was nominated for a Golden Calf. Oysters at Nam Kee appeared in 2000, was made into a movie and won the 2001 F. Bordewijk Prize. Recent novels are Paradiso and A Kind of Family which was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize. Sacrifice (2014) was published by C. Bertelsmann in Germany.
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Kees van Beijnum The Beautiful Season A compelling contemporary drama about a family coach and her son The ominous disappearance of a child under her supervision turns family coach Beatrijs’s life upside down. The disappearance lands her in a media-fed nightmare of accusation and fear. After a humiliating experience with classmates, Arno, her son, decides to stop attending his secondary school. In order to conceal his absence from his mother he hides each day in the nearby house of Christian, a mysterious former teacher who lives alone. Kees van Beijnum’s has once again created characters that will instantly steal readers’ hearts. With great compassion, he ingeniously portrays his character’s struggles, failures and efforts to rise up to the expectations of an increasingly complex reality. The Beautiful Season splendidly interweaves timeless beauty with an urgent feel.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Option publisher: C. Bertelsmann (Germany) Novel - 288 pages - March 2017 7
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‘Crazy Aunty walked up to me. Slow and menacing. She brought her face, which looked even more frightening with all that pepper, up close to mine. I thought she was going to say something, her hot breath blew in my face, but she didn’t speak. She stuck her index finger in her mouth, licked it, and wrote in the white pepper dust on the table with her wet finger. Carefully I followed her handwriting with my eyes. An R, an E, an F.
REFENGE was written in the dust.’
After studying psychology, NHUNG DAM (b. 1984) opted to attend the Amsterdam School for Drama and Contemporary Music Theatre, graduating in 2011. She has written a variety of plays which have been translated into German and English. She also works as an actress and theatre maker. A Thousand Fathers is her debut novel.
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Nhung Dam A Thousand Fathers The imaginary world of a young Vietnamese girl hides the raw reality In an ice-cold village on the edge of the world a Vietnamese family tries to survive. As refugees they were fished out of the water by a northern cargo ship and placed in a country they knew nothing of. The father departs one day leaving no message. The rest of the family is abandoned to the whims of the Chinese mafia. The eleven-yearold daughter becomes trapped between her mother’s complete despair and the insanity of her unfamiliar surroundings. She finds herself looking at a world in which an excess of imagination is punished. Residents meet every week in the Bald Billiards café to decide who the village belongs to, the sea takes fierce bites out of the land and snow falls endlessly from the heavens. She finds a glimmer of friendship with a man who lives on a dilapidated little boat and asks her a thousand questions. Her only weapon for finding her father in a world full of whores, toothpaste salesmen and gambling addicts is her rich imagination.
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‘“There’s an upstairs and a downstairs. Just do what you always do.” His voice is deep; the words come out with difficulty, as if he hasn’t seen another human being in days. The living room is bright. There are no photos of family members, no artwork over the sofa, no side tables with newspapers, no pens or stacks of books anywhere. There’s a single shelf, with a tea light and a stopped clock on it. In here it’s always two-thirty. The floor is strewn with pips, muesli, nuts and solidified pasta. The dining table is empty, save for a layer of dust. It’s a living room you might find after a house move.’ SYTSKE VAN KOEVERINGE (b. 1988) graduated in 2014 from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, specialising in image and language. Her work can be seen in, among others publications, de Fusie, De Gids, Hard//hoofd, MisterMotley and Das Magazin. She participated in the first edition of the Slow Writing Lab organised by the Dutch Foundation for Literature. She lives and works in Amsterdam.
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Sytske van Koeveringe It’s Monday Today The marvellous adventures of a young cleaning lady Julia, a young woman approaching thirty, fills her days with cleaning other people’s homes. Little by little she takes possession of the houses: the roof garden of number 25, the bedroom of number 6, the kitchen of number 122-D, the bed of number 27. Once there was the promise of a literary debut, now there is pressure from others to have some social significance. Her boyfriend has left her because she wrote a book about their relationship but she still fantasises about him. She drinks too much, sleeps badly and wanders through the city’s empty streets at night. By day she observes others who appear to have their lives in order. Her father wants her to show more ambition. Yogaman is after her but she doesn’t really want him. Sytske van Koeveringe humorously reveals the complex world in which everyone must find their own path.
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Press on Sebastian's Nose: ‘For images like these you read a novel such as Sebastian’s Nose: the moments in which
literature splashes into
your body in a great wave and settles into the furthest corners [...] An outstanding novel.’ **** NRC HANDELSBLAD ‘Schröder proves once again that he is one of the best
novelists in the Netherlands.’ DE TIJD ‘Schröder creates a magical universe, convincing thanks to its sparkling, fantastic
style.’ TROUW
ALLARD SCHRÖDER (b. 1946) has written many novels, short stories and radio plays since the 1980s. His breakthrough came with The Hydrographer, an astonishing novel in which the laws of the sea are reflected in those of love. The Hydrographer won the author the AKO Literature Prize in 2002, has been translated into several languages, and was published in Germany by Mare Verlag last year. Schröder has written further novels and a volume of poetry. The novel The Dead Arm (2013) was shortlisted for the AKO Literature Prize. His most recent novel is Sebastian’s Nose (2016) which was highly praised in the press.
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Allard Schröder The Beautiful Sleeper The Temptation of Domination In his tenth novel Allard Schröder sinks deep into the subconscious of a successful businesswoman who is a prisoner of her own suppressed sadistic desires. She becomes infatuated with a much younger cousin who comes to stay with her for a while. In the same period she meets the unfathomable Justine, who gives her a sniff of life in freedom. Writing with great psychological insight and literary subtlety, Allard Schröder shows how freedom and the desire to cause pain to another person are fatefully combined. The Beautiful Sleeper is a novel about domination, about the dark side of everyone; it is the kind of story only Schröder could write.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Option publisher: Mare Verlag (Germany) Novel - 172 pages - March 2017 13
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‘The best thing about war is that it can end your life at any moment. When you read Commander Rabbit you suddenly understand that – a
great achievement on
the part of the writer.’ **** DE VOLKSKRANT ‘The actual dramatic story lies not so much in being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being hit by a bullet, but rather in the ruthless,
narcissistic self-
justification: “My children wait patiently and don’t complain because they understand how important this story is to me. Daddy is in a war and that is quite something. He can’t just come home every weekend, even if he promised to.” That is the story that needs to be uncompromising Maas’ VRIJ NEDERLAND
told, by the driven,
MICHEL MAAS (b. 1954) is a philosopher and correspondent for the NOS and de Volkskrant. Commander Rabbit is his second novel. He won the Geertjan Lubberhuizen prize, the annual prize for the best literary debut, for his first book, Lieu Hanh’s Wings. Kosovo. Report on a War was published in 1999.
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Michel Maas Commander Rabbit ‘Come death, come love.’ Commander Rabbit is a raw autobiographical novel about a man who drifts away from his old life due to his secret addiction to war. He is constantly in search of an adrenaline kick. At the moment when he no longer expects it, he is hit by a bullet which activates his memory. It takes him back to the first war he encountered and he is compelled to live out the bizarre story of violence and love to its end.
‘Since Kosovo, new wars have come and gone. The stage changes, the characters and the dramas change, but the play remains the same. And in that play, we, the journalists, will never be alone because we will always have our war families, that bound army of people who make our reports possible.’
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Press on A Thousand Hills: ‘An informative book, which tells us as much about ourselves as about Rwanda.’ **** KNACK Press on Great European Novel: ‘A revelation. Reading a story like this makes you
happy.’
CORRIERE DELLA SERRA
KOEN PEETERS (b. 1959) is the author of a rich, award-winning oeuvre. The postman won him the NCR prize; Great European Novel was shortlisted for the Libris literature prize and translated into various languages. His novel The Flowers won him the F. Bordewijk prize in 2010. His latest novel, A Thousand Hills, won the E. du Perron prize in 2013.
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Koen Peeters The People Healer A disappearing farming life and a guilt-ridden colonial past The young Remi, predestined to follow in his father’s footsteps as a farmer, is pursued by irrepressible dreams and voices. His uncle whispers strange, fiercely moving stories to him about the war, about a ghost and about a black soldier. When Remi announces that he has a vocation and is to enter a strict order of monks, no one can understand him. In the monastery his personality is redrawn: he meditates and studies doggedly, estranging still more of his family and searching for quiet within himself. But the daemon inside will not be silenced. The old stories push Remi to the heart of Africa. He chases ever further until he meets the nganga, a healer, in Kwango who helps him get to know his daemon.
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Press on By Force:
‘Narrative drive and stylistic virtuosity.’ ***** DE STANDAARD
‘Switch off your phone and computer, lock just read.’ ALGEMEEN DAGBLAD
the door and
‘An exciting murder mystery and a highly charged psychological novel.’ VPRO GIDS
The oeuvre of A.F.TH. VAN DER HEIJDEN (b. 1951) is dominated by two sagas: The Toothless Time and Homo Duplex. In 2011 Van der Heijden won the Constantijn Huygens Award for his entire oeuvre. In the same year he published Tonio, a requiem novel about the sudden death of his only child, which won him the Libris Literature Prize and the NS Readers’ Prize. In 2013 A.F.Th. van der Heijden received the P.C. Hooft Prize for his entire oeuvre. The Hellcat and The Morning Gift will be published by Suhrkamp Verlag in Germany. The film version of The Hellcat was released in March 2016 by Sigma Pictures and the film adaption of Tonio, produced by NL Film & TV, in October 2016.
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A.F.Th. van der Heijden By Force ‘The best book of 2016’ DE VOLKSKRANT The relationship between publicity agent Nico Dorlas, in his late forties, and his younger girlfriend Desy is in trouble. His paranoid fear of abandonment, amplified by drink and drugs, makes him hell to live with. When Desy clears out, Dorlas pulls out all the stops to win her back – first willingly, and eventually unwillingly. Whether he has the right prey in his sights remains uncertain for a long time. Dorlas is supported by Ernst Quispel, the criminal lawyer who has grown greyer and more cynical. Despite his efforts Dorlas’s universe crumbles within one infernal period of twentyfour hours. Other lives rise again from the rubble. In a new variant of the classic murder mystery, By Force is not so much a ‘whodunit’ as a ‘whotookit’, rooted in current events but universal in its scope.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Option publisher: Suhrkamp Verlag (Germany) Novel - 1408 pages - November 2016 19
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By Force
[Page 19]
Once Dad had finally come out and said it, Mom had a total meltdown. She was even in the hospital for a while—rumors rippled through the family of a failed suicide attempt, but if so it must have been during Nico's class trip to the countryside. One of his cousins claimed that Mom had ingested a dish of finely cut hair, a time-tested suicide method in the Far East. Nico couldn't find a suicide note anywhere in the house, unless that's how he was supposed to interpret Mom's burial insurance policy, which was normally in the buffet drawer but, after she was taken to the hospital, turned out to be stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet. If the whispers were true, whose hair had his mother used when trying to kill herself? None of her own appeared to be missing, as she sat propped up with pillows, refusing to talk. Nico still had a full head of hair too, and the barber on the corner swept his customers' locks into the hole at the back of the shop after every haircut. He wondered if Mom had gained access to the space beneath that hole, a basement perhaps, filled with raw material for wigs— brown, black, blonde, and gray curls all tangled up together, reeking of sebum, Brylcreem, and a choice selection of shampoos. "A dish of finely cut hair"... how would you choke it down, anyway? One pinch at a time, laid on the tongue and washed down with water? Nico put this hypothesis to the test by cutting off a lock of his own hair and swallowing it with the help of a glass of milk— not because he wanted to end his life, but to find out if the method was technically feasible. Milk proved to be a bad choice: its fatty texture made the hair form a clump, which got caught somewhere around his uvula (or so he pictured it, at least). He went around coughing for days. It seemed like a typically Chinese suicide method; after all, they gobbled down bird's nests (or
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at least the kind composed mainly of swiftlet saliva). The magnet on the refrigerator door was shaped like a lizard, so that left him none the wiser. Even in her morose and weakened state, Mom was still strong enough to forbid her son to join the Valkenburg Two—or the Second Litter, as she came to call her enemies, even though no additions to their household were anticipated. For a couple of weeks, Nico was entrusted to the care of his grandparents. On his way to their house after school every day, he would visit his mother at the Sint Lucas Hospital. "Tell me, Niekje," she once asked him, "did you know about this?" "I didn't notice a thing, Mom, honest I didn't. They say you... I mean, if you'd used Japanese hair, or Korean, you would've... see, it's thinner, straighter, sharper... it pierces straight through your intestinal walls, they say. Then you die a slow death." "No more of that nonsense." She sat up a little straighter. "I'm talking about Valkenburg, you know that perfectly well, you little weasel." Nico focused all his attention on the matt blue grape he was screwing loose from the bunch on the nightstand, instead of just pulling it off. "That's a yes," Mom said. "Right?" He turned red and avoided her eyes. "I always thought they had numbers on the doors of the rooms at a boarding house." "Well, one thing I know for certain is that the landlady doesn't normally sleep with the first guest who walks through the door." "You know, Mom... when we got there, he, like, finished every sentence with 'Miss Cognée.' 'Oh, Miss Cognée!' A couple days later it was 'Hetty' this and 'Hetty' that. Pffff. I got kind of sick of it." He popped the grape into his mouth. "Oh, Niek.... oh, Niekje. Why didn't you tell me?"
Translated by David McKay
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‘A delicately unfolded, cleverly constructed and, through their psychological finesse, fascinating story.’ FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU
‘Margriet de Moor tells us the story of a young woman who gets up in the middle of the night and starts making a cake. Her lover is asleep in her bedroom upstairs, and when it is time to remove the cake from the oven, the reader has read a tragic story of love and death. No doubt, the impression made by Sleepless Night is inversely proportional to its length :
unforgettable.’’ JEAN MATTERN, EDITIONS GRASSET Press on Margriet de Moor’s work: ‘Musicality and a feel for passion. There is life,
love and
pain on every page.’ THE NEW YORK TIMES Margriet de Moor is the ‘European expert on the abysses of love’ – MICHAEL KRÜGER, KÖLNER STADT-ANZEIGER MARGRIET DE MOOR (b. 1941) made her debut in 1988 with the short story collection Seen from Behind. It was followed by successful novels including First Grey, Then White, Then Blue, which won her the AKO Literature Prize in 1992, The Virtuoso, The Kreuzer Sonata, The Storm, The Painter and the Girl and Mélodie d’amour. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages.
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Margriet de Moor Sleepless Night Why did her young husband commit suicide? And why does she bake cake at night? Everyone thought she would move house after the shameful incident. An accident, she called it, the shot in the chicory greenhouse. She remained, renounced her widow’s existence and started meeting men through personal ads. The encounters always followed the same pattern: getting to know one another, stories, a shared night. But the memory of her deceased husband still has her in its grasp. During a sleepless winter’s night she thinks over the years past and tries to fathom her young husband. Why did he do it? And what is her part in the story? With her powerful voice, Margriet de Moor tells a gripping love story, about departure and death, rage and jealousy and the possibility of a new beginning.
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‘Reviewers have compared it favorably to J .D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Albert Camus’s The Stranger and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle.’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘The Evenings is a
canonical work of postwar European fiction, capturing the age’s spiritual alienation through an acidly comic style that reads somewhat like an extended monologue from Beckett, but one riddled with morbid jokes and mock grandiloquence.’ WALL STREET JOURNAL ‘It may sound dire, but Reve’s sparkling collage of acute observation, droll internal monologue and pitch-perfect dialogue keeps
the reader breathless right through to the grand finale.’ THE GUARDIAN ‘A powerful story.’ OBSERVER ‘Gives
Kafka a run for his money.’ BIG ISSUE GERARD REVE (1923-2006) was one of the defining writers of the twentieth century. In 1969 he received the P.C. Hooft prize for his entire oeuvre and in 2001 the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren (Dutch Literature Prize). In 1998 he was designated commander in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
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Gerard Reve The Evenings Internationally rediscovered Dutch classic sweeps press off their feet: ‘In all fairness to Salinger, The Evenings is so much better.’ IRISH TIMES
The Evenings (1947) is one of the most important books in Dutch literature. Now a classic, it is a gripping description of the monotony that held sway over the Netherlands in the postwar years. It tells the story of Frits van Egters, who in the dark December days just after WWII strikes attitudes when faced with his parents and friends. A grey haze of melancholy lies over everything, and with his wayward sense of humour he tries to break through the armour of boredom. In the enthralling closing chapter he reaches the sobering insight that by looking and observing he has warded off meaninglessness: ‘It has been seen; it has not gone unnoticed.’
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Rights sold: Pushkin Press (England), Kırmızı Kedi Yayınevi (Turkey), Iperborea (Italy), other translations published years ago - Novel – 288 pages -1947 - Featured by the Dutch Literature Foundation 25
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‘I told the children that Mom was in heaven, that bad people had planted a bomb in the metro, that God had wanted to protect her and that was why he’d picked her up and taken her with him to heaven. To them, life is just stupid. A mom who says goodbye, gives them a kiss and goes to work, and after that no more Mom. They don’t get it. They saw Mom in the paper. “We are all brothers,” I say. “Is someone who does this also a brother?” “Yes, he is also a brother, but a brother who’s taken the wrong turn. He is a brother in humanity, even though he’s done something terrible.” They are furious, they want revenge. I say: “If you kill someone like that or answer him with violence, you make the same mistake he did. You lower yourself to his level. You are better than that.”’ DAVID VAN REYBROUCK (b. 1971) is a journalist, a writer of literary non-fiction, a poet and a playwright. He made his literary debut in 2001 with the award-winning The Plague. His greatest success is Congo, a History, for which he received a slew of national and international prizes, including the Libris History Prize 2010, the Jan Greshoff Prize 2010 and the AKO Literature Prize 2010. The book was a runaway success in Germany, France and Norway, and has been translated into many other languages. A Plea for Populism won him the Jan Hanlo Essay Prize 2009 and the Flemish Cultural Prize for Criticism and the Essay 2009. Against Elections, an urgent call for the reform of democracy, was published in 2013 and has since been sold to sixteen territories. In March 2016, Zinc was the official ‘Dutch Book Week Essay 2016’. La paix, ça s'apprend! by David Van Reybrouck and Thomas d’Ansembourg was published in January 2017 by Actes Sud (France) and will be published by De Bezige Bij in late May of 2017.
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Mohamed El Bachiri & David Van Reybrouck
A Jihad for Love ‘I am a jihadist for love. Do not ask me to hate, I would rather die!’ Mohamed El Bachiri is a Belgian of Moroccan origin, a Muslim and a native of Molenbeek, the Brussels district regularly referred to as the breeding grounds for the recent attacks in Paris and the Belgian capital. He is also the husband of Loubna Lafquiri, the love of his life and the mother of his children, who died on 22 March 2016 in the Brussels bombings. In late December of 2016, his loving speech on the television show De Afspraak stirred millions of viewers and went on to become the most frequently viewed video ever on Flemish television. In A Jihad for Love—written down and arranged by best-selling Flemish author David Van Reybrouck—Mohamed speaks about his growing-up years in Molenbeek, his love for his wife and his life after the attacks. As an homage to Loubna, Mohamed channels the pain he suffered with resilience and bravery into a message of love and humanity, in which he appeals to western Muslims for a more humanist approach to Islam. The result is a sober text of astonishing wisdom. A Jihad for Love is the answer to the hatred of those who wish to divide us, of those who propagate violence and terrorism. World rights: De Bezige Bij - Option publishers: Suhrkamp (Germany), Feltrinelli (Italy), Taurus (Spain), The Bodley Head (UK), Tiderne Skifter (Denmark), Font Forlag (Norway), Galapagos (South-Korea), Siltala (Finland), Gondolat (Hungary), Al Arabi (Egypt), Futura (Serbia), Krtina (Slovenia), Hosei University Press (Japan) - Paperback - 96 pages (9,000 words) - March 2017 English sample & French unedited manuscript available 27
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‘What he understands under radicalism is not jihad or taking up weapons - he calls that “destructive radicalism”. What
defines a radical then? A critical attitude to the western capitalist system, he argues, or “constructive radicalism” TROUW ‘This book is not
a reason for rebellion but for
protest and discussion, as befits a pamphlet.’
NRC NEXT
DYAB ABOU JAHJAH (b. 1971) is a Lebanese-born publicist and activist. In the early nineties, he moved to Belgium where he studied political science. In 2000, he founded the Arab European League (AEL), a movement that advocated for the rights of Muslim immigrants and proved to be controversial from the outset. Since 2014, he has been president of Movement X, a civil rights movement that unites immigrants and natives in their ambition to fight against every form of discrimination.
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Dyab Abou Jahjah A Case for Radicalisation A call to radically transform the status quo We live in a time of uncertainty: capitalism is caught in a crisis, European solidarity is facing pressure, cities are undergoing radical demographic shifts and at the borders of Europe a humanitarian disaster is unfolding. In response to these developments, the established political order has, by nature, assumed a conservative stance; they are striving to preserve the status quo and thereby focused only on counteracting its symptoms. Dyab Abou Jahjah is instead joining the politico-philosophical debate as one of its radical voices: he advocates for a more fundamental inquiry into the foundations of our society so as to enable change. In doing so, he draws a distinction between destructive radicalism and constructive radicalism, of which he convincingly chooses for the latter. Abou Jahjah is not one to shy away from difficult discussions. His A Case for Radicalisation is an extremely urgent call to bring our deepest assumptions into question.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Non-Fiction / prickly discourse - 156 pages - October 2016 29
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‘Every day, I walk down the street and tell passers by what I have eaten, how I feel, what I have done the night before and what I will do for the rest of the day. I give them pictures of my wife, my daughter, my dog and me gardening and on holiday, spending time by the pool. I also listen to their conversations, tell them I ‘like’ them and give them my opinion on every subject that interests me... whether it interests them or not. And it works. I already have four people following me: two police officers, a social worker, and a psychiatrist.’
WOUTER VAN NOORT (b. 1985) is a journalist. He writes about technology and economics for the NRC Handelsblad, and has worked for Elsevier and The NOS. He is frequently asked to lecture as guest and speaker at, among other venues, the popular Dutch talk show De Wereld Draait Door and the Univeristy of Leiden. His debut title Is Anybody There? will be published in April this year.
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Wouter van Noort Is Anybody There? How the Smartphone Rules Our Lives Simple questions about our iPhone usage evolve into a big quest after how rapidly changing smart phone technology is intervening with our relationships, health, work and happiness. We text, email, google, post pictures on Instagram and tweet all day long. Meanwhile we spend more time on Facebook than we do eating. A growing body of research shows that excessive smartphone use is not only bad for our concentration, but also our stress levels and it even changes our brains. Stronger still: there are an increasing number of indications that our smartphone behaviour has all the characteristics of a collective addiction. In Is Anybody There?, NRC-journalist Wouter van Noort investigates his own smartphone use and how that behaviour influences his life, work and relationships. He also speaks with intellectuals in the fields of psychology, economics and technology and visits the most powerful tech companies in the world to try and figure out how exactly the smartphone intervenes in our relationships, our work— our happiness. This is a personal quest after the way in which the smartphone is changing our lives.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Non-Fiction - 224 pages - April 2017 - English sample translation available 31
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Press on The Way Up: ‘It has a pleasant, light tone, made convincing by the way Bons analyses himself in an honest, sometimes
endearing
manner.’**** HET PAROOL ‘In The Way Up Martin Bons not only gives an account of his attempt to climb the famed mountain, the 21 bends are also chapters in a personal questions.’ ESQUIRE
narrative of life’s design, goals and
MARTIN BONS (b. 1963) is a freelance journalist, cycle racing fanatic and writer of the much praised books The Art of the Descent (2013) and The Way Up (2015).
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Martin Bons The Art of Sprinting A must-read for any cycle-racing enthusiast Mark Cavendish, Marcel Kittel and André Greipel are the best sprinters on the team. Heroes who throw themselves into the fight for the finish line with genuine disregard for death. Whether it is a mass sprint or a sprint-à-deux, in nine out of ten races the competitors arrive at the finish in a group. If you can’t sprint, it’s difficult to win. Martin Bons, a fanatical amateur, organises an annual cycle race, a sprint route par excellence. He has never stood on the podium. He never even finished in the first twenty. In the coming big anniversary race that has to change. He examines hundreds of mass sprints, delves into the literature, speaks to the fast men on the team and subjects himself to special training, all to fathom the mystery of the sprint, all to stand on the podium in the tenth edition of the Oogbokaal Contest.
World rights: Thomas Rap - Non-fiction/ cycling – 224 pages - March 2017 33
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Press on This is My Farm: ‘In This is My Farm, De Stoop raises a personal story out of a boggy polder in Zeeland to touch us all. … Born storyteller De Stoop joins
a rich tradition of writers such as John Steinbeck, John Berger, Geert Mak and Frank Westerman.’ DE MORGEN ‘It is a beautiful and poignant book.’ DE VOLKSKRANT ‘A modern j'accuse. De Stoop masterfully
evokes the
melancholy expanse of the disappearing polders, the farmers' pain, the unequal struggle against the port and the nature conservation movement.’ GAZET VAN ANTWERPEN CHRIS DE STOOP (b. 1958) is an author and a journalist for the Flemish weekly magazine Knack. In 2004 he was awarded the Golden Owl Readers’ Prize for They Came from the East. In 2010 he wrote Peace Be With You, Sister, about the first jihadists to leave for Syria and Iraq. With his debut They’re So Sweet, Sir 1992 he became the first to write the inside story of the international trafficking of women, a bombshell of a book that caused great commotion at home and abroad. In 2015 This is My Farm was published, which became a bestseller with translation rights sold to Germany and China to date.
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Chris de Stoop Ex-Reporter His best journalistic stories and most memorable reportages More than thirty years ago Chris de Stoop started out as a reporter at the magazine Knack. Those were the press golden years. De Stoop made his name with probing and engaging stories which sometimes had farreaching consequences. According to De Stoop, journalism is one of the most beautiful professions in the world, as long as it can be practised with integrity, creativity and quality, and one of the ugliest if not. He went in search of hostesses in Manila, was abducted in Albania and made a hellish journey with 23 orphans during the genocide in Rwanda. Closer to home he wrote about the flooding of the Hedwigepolder, about Dutch cannabis plantations in Flanders and about the first jihadists to travel to Syria and Iraq.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Option publishers: Fischer (Germany), Shanghai ’99 (China) - Literary non-fiction - 304 pages - September 2016 35
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‘It is an outstandingly written book; clear, intelligent and compelling.’ DE GROENE AMSTERDAMMER ‘Withuis reveals in fine detail how Juliana’s personal troubles transcend her private
life.' NRC HANDELSBLAD
‘A wonderful biography'**** HET PAROOL
'A book to read breathlessly in one sitting. A biography of a queen who could not allow herself to be known in life.' LEESKOST Until 2014, JOLANDE WITHUIS (b. 1949) was a researcher affiliated with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD). She was a columnist for Opzij for many years and currently writes for NRC Handelsblad, Trouw and de Volkskrant. In 2012 Withuis was one of the interviewees in the television programme Zomergasten (Summer Guests). De Bezige Bij has published Recognition (2002), After the Camp (2005), Women as Human Beings (2007) and in 2008 Be Manly, Be Strong, a biography about resistance fighter Pim Boellaard, which won the Grote Geschiedenis Prijs, a prize for historical writing, in 2009 and the Erik Hazelhoff biography prize in 2010.
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Jolande Withuis Juliana Queen in a Man’s World A portrait of an eventful era through the life story of the beloved queen of the Netherlands Juliana (1909-2004) was a queen much loved by many; nevertheless we know little about her personal life. After a protected childhood in the confinement of the court and her flourishing during her stay in Canada during World War II, when she was much more proactive on behalf of the Allied case than is generally known, Juliana began her ‘weighty but beautiful’ duty in 1948, full of ambition. The competent princess was soon confronted with great personal and political disappointments and her reign was marked with a series of crises. Juliana’s longstanding love for Prince Bernhard, who fell from heaven to be her liberator in 1936, was her Achilles heel. He was almost her downfall. Juliana was capricious and keen, pious and naive. One thing she was not was ordinary. She had to function in a world of men who often felt superior. And just as she resisted so many other conventions, from a young age Juliana resisted discrimination against women. Never before has there been such a detailed, scientifically grounded biography of the monarch so many saw as ‘our’ queen. Withuis based her work on letters and other private material never previously published. This has enabled her to write not an intimate and penetrating life history as well as providing a portrait of an eventful era. World rights: De Bezige Bij - Biography - 864 pages - October 2016 37
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‘In Seeping Poison Corine Hartman has again delivered an
excellent, oppressively atmospheric thriller about a family tragedy.’ MARIE CLAIRE Press on A Fit of Insanity: ‘Corine Hartman belongs among
the top Dutch
writers.’ DE TELEGRAPH ‘Blistering
psychological thriller.’ MARIE CLAIRE
‘Corine Hartman is working on a hard-boiled the style of Karin Slaughter.’ ELSEVIER
oeuvre in
CORINE HARTMAN (b. 1964) worked as a scriptwriter for many years and has fifteen thrillers to her name. Her books are famed for their tough action sequences and fascinating characters. She has been nominated for the Gouden Strop a number of times and has won several Crimezone Awards.
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Corine Hartman Seeping Poison Domestic noir at its best. Inspired by a real-life tragedy Jacqueline loves her husband, despite his increasing tendency to intimidate and manipulate her. It must be her fault, because to the outside world he is always very obliging. Charming, even. Things will soon get better again: caring for her manic depressive mother swallows up a great deal of time and Gijs has not yet got over being made redundant. She has to be patient. And after all, they’re good together aren’t they? But it’s not that simple. On the contrary. With her French namesake’s deed in mind, eventually Jacqueline can only see one way out. He has to die.
World rights: Cargo - Domestic noir - 304 pages - February 2017 - English sample translation available 39
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Press on Guilty Gold: ‘Janssen writes skilfully and swiftly, maintaining the suspense. Janssen has surpassed himself and his books so far.’ **** VN DETECTIVE & THRILLERGIDS ‘Guilty Gold is a successful combination
of
contemporary action, the experiences of a partly fictitious head of De Nederlandsche Bank during the war and
historical facts. A book with verve, from which readers can learn a great deal.’ NRC HANDELSBLAD
ROEL JANSSEN (b. 1947) is a financial-economic journalist, former editor of NRC Handelsblad and fervent marine yachtsman. In a variety of jobs over the past thirty years he has reported on great economic events and financial crises. He also writes thrillers and once contributed as a screen writer 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 created a stir in the Dutch parliament, leading them to raise questions.
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Roel Janssen All is Lost A drowning girl is the key to shocking discoveries about the European refugee crisis Sailor Tessa Insinger and photographer Mortimer Davies sail to the Greek islands and along the Turkish coast for a reportage on refugees desperate to reach Europe. At sea they rescue a refugee from an overturned rubber boat: a Syrian girl. She is the only survivor of the disaster which has taken place. Tessa and Mortimer decide to investigate what happened to the girl. In doing so they stumble across shrewd people smugglers, animated relief workers, dubious business people and shady Europeans fighting for a radical solution to the refugee tragedy. With information from the Syrian girl, Tessa and Mortimer unravel a conspiracy.
World rights: Cargo - Suspense – 320 pages - February 201 41
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Marcel Möring Eden Eden brings together all the themes of Möring’s work: futile memory, madness and chaos. ‘Moral, eclectic, compelling novel with a historic focus reaching back to the Middle Ages.’ TROUW ‘Eden is the most stimulating on the most abstract level […] Everything has a function in Marcel Möring’s new book.’ NRC HANDELSBLAD Eden is the story of a nameless child who grows up in a forest so vast and sprawling that he has no knowledge of the world beyond it. The reader watches as he flees one day from an act he did not commit. In a psychiatric hospital a patient commits suicide. Another patient, found as if dead in city woodland, no longer knows who he is. And there is the mysterious Stephanie, too, who on the face of it has nothing wrong with her. Psychiatrist Mendel Adenauer sees his institution as the place where society’s driftwood washes up and he wonders whether he is right to think that people and the world can be healed.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Rights sold: Luchterhand (Germany) - 400 pages January 2017 - English sample available
SUCCESSFUL TITLES FICTION
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Stefan Hertmans The Convert ‘It was if they could hear the loneliness of time itself.’ ‘The Convert is a crucial book that will stir hearts and minds. […] Once again a testament to his outstanding authorship.’ **** DE STANDAARD ‘From out of a small history Hertmans spins an immense story with impressive imagination…[he] evokes the era as a snickering character hiding from just us around the corner.’ **** DE VOLKSKRANT ‘The Convert is a portrait of an iron-willed woman. Hertmans has created a heroine for the ages.’ ***** KNACK ‘The book is terrifyingly current. The intolerance, the religious fanaticism, the search for identity, the refugee issue. One thousand years on and it seems as though barely anything has changed.’ DE TIJD In a small town in Provence, France, the people have spoken of a pogrom and a hidden chest since time immemorial. At the end of nineteenth century a startling collection of Jewish documents was found in a synagogue in Cairo. It is here that Stefan Hertmans discovers the traces of a distinguished Christian noblewoman of the eleventh century who abandons her life for the love of a Jewish boy. He follows in the footsteps of this woman as she flees with her forbidden love and undertakes a dizzying journey full of hardships, hunted by everyone and everything. Hertmans based the story of The Convert on historical facts, including a letter of recommendation written by a rabbi on parchment, and he brings the Middle Ages to life with immense imagination and stylistic ingenuity. It is a story that draws him into a chaotic world of passion, hate, love and death, and one that in the end carries him from Cairo back to the small village in Provence where he has made his home for decades. World rights: De Bezige Bij - Rights sold: Hanser Berlin (Germany), Marginesy (Poland), Harvill Secker (UK), Text (ANZ), Pantheon (USA, Canada), Gallimard (France), Marsilio (Italy), ArtPeople (Denmark), Europa (Hungary), Fraktura (Croatia) - Option publishers: Slovenia (Beletrina), Shorai-sha (Japan), Intertext (China) - Novel – 314 pages - October 2016 - English sample, full German translation available 43
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Jeroen Olyslaegers Will A brutal war novel where nobody’s innocent ‘An important and confrontational book in which the past continues to resonate with the present, in a style sharp as a razor.’ **** - NRC Handelsblad ‘Will introduces an original, fresh perspective on a period that seems to have been written to death.’ **** KNACK A book like a slap in the face. **** DE MORGEN Jeroen Olyslaegers has done it: his Big Book. He has written his Sorrow of Belgium, his Chapel Road and above all his very own Will. ***** DE STANDAARD It is wartime. Antwerp is in the grip of violence and distrust. Wilfried Wils regards himself as a poet in the making but at the same time he has to get by as an auxiliary policeman. The beautiful Yvette falls in love with him; her brother is a daredevil who sticks his neck out to help the Jews. Wilfried’s artistic mentor Nijdig Baardje (‘Angry Beard’) is keen to see all the Jews annihilated. Wavering uneasily between two worlds, Wilfried tries to survive as the persuit of the Jews continues relentlessly. Years later he tells his story to his great-grandson. Olyslaegers disputes the widely accepted boudaries between good and evil and makes the book resonate ingeniously with the twenty-first century.
World rights: De Bezige Bij - Rights sold: DuMont (Germany), Euromedia Group (Czech Republic), Pushkin Press (United Kingdom), Éditions Stock (France) - Novel pages 333 - August 2016
SUCCESSFUL TITLES COMMERCIAL FICTION
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Donald Nolet The Devil’s Handwriting The inspiration for The Devil’s Handwriting, the Voynich manuscript, remains a riddle for cryptographers to this day ‘After an aclaimed debut, Donald Nolet returns with an addictive thriller. The Devil’s Handwriting is of a calibre to match the work of Dan Brown.’ **** DE VOLKSKRANT A fast paced, gripping thriller that makes you curious about the real-life manuscript.’ **** NOORDHOLLANDS DAGBLAD ‘Intelligent summer thriller full of clues, inscriptions and secret locations.’ ZIN Zina Welter, a brilliant young mathematician, works as an analyst at a multinational bank in New York. When she hands over inside information on the bank’s operations to the American government, Zina is not only fired, she faces the threat of court action and being sued for damages. In a single day she finds her life derailed. She returns to the Netherlands, where her old professor from Princeton approaches her with the Voynich manuscript, a fifteenth-century illustrated work, written in an unknown language. No one has yet been able to crack this Holy Grail of decryption. Drawn to the mystery, Zina finds herself slowly beginning to develop an algorithm that could be the key to unlocking the manuscript’s secret. At a meeting with Voynich experts, she reveals her plan. From that point onwards, Zina is swept along a journey across Europe, accompanying a motley crew of specialists, each with motives of their own for wanting to decipher the manuscript. As its true significance begins to reveal itself, unsettling events come in quick succession. Whom can Zina still trust? The NSA is just one of the organizations that has tried and failed to break the code. There are many theories to date, yet not a single word has been decrypted. World rights: Cargo – Rights sold: Droemer Knaur (Germany) - Suspense pages 334 - May 2016 45
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Anita Terpstra Together ‘Four women have disappeared. My husband knows where they are.’ ‘Together features intriguing characters that are fully rounded. The story gains an extra dimension by continually switching between the cellar where the women are systematically abused and events surrounding the newly married couple.’ NEDERLANDS DAGBLAD ‘Terpstra writes gripping, tense and character-driven thrillers.’ VN DETECTIVE & THRILLERGIDS When Mackenzie marries Matt, a prisoner on death row, she is ditched by everyone around her. Matt has been convicted of the kidnapping of four women. One of the victims managed to escape and Matt was found guilty based on her testimony. He continues to insist he is innocent, however, and the other women have never been found. But then one more young woman disappears. To save Matt’s life, Mackenzie goes all out to prove him innocent. When that fails she decides to help him escape from the top security prison. Because for her, far more yet is at stake.
World rights: Cargo - Rights sold: Blanvalet/Random House (Germany) - Thriller pages 288 - September 2016
SUCCESSFUL TITLES NON-FICTION …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Ignaas Devisch Restlessness In defense of an immoderate life Winner of the Best SPIRITUAL BOOK AWARD 2016, shortlisted for the 2017 SOCRATES CUP
On the positive aspects of a life of excess ‘An extremely worthwhile read. As well as a philosophical and historical exploration of troubling feelings, Devisch extends to us something we can grasp in order to pull ourselves out of the morass.’ KNACK ‘Devisch takes a stand for passion, creativity and dreams; positive concerns that are the result of that ever-persistent rush forward. Restlessness is neither a fiction nor a self-help book, but rather a startlingly and stunningly written essay on how we can relate to that hectic changing world.’ FROM THE JURY REPORT, BEST SPIRITUAL BOOK AWARD 2016 ‘Restlessness is an exceptionally accessible and multidimensional book about a theme that nevertheless remains a main feature of Western culture. Devisch wants to describe rather than moralise, though in his plea for a restless, creative and passionate existence the moral peeks at us from around the corner. But then that’s also the charm of this book.’**** TROUW We work less, but we have more to do. We have more free time, but we sleep less. While we complain about stress, rushing and the danger of burn-outs, we plan overfilled days. In short, our time is becoming ‘obese’. We cram everything in and are no longer able to mess about or truly do nothing. Anyone who thinks restlessness is a phenomenon specific to our own times is mistaken. For centuries people have sought a solution to a problem of which they themselves are the cause: an excessively full life. But is restlessness really a problem or one of our primary motivations? Passion, creativity and desire are the result of impatience, writes philosopher and physician Ignaas Devisch. In defiance of all appeals to slow down and of calls for spirituality and asceticism, this book advocates a balance between relaxation and dynamism. World rights: De Bezige Bij - Literary non-fiction - pages 320 - March 2016 – Sample translation available 47
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David Van Reybrouck Against Elections An urgent call for reform that seeks to breathe new life into democracy ‘Choosing our rulers by popular vote has failed to deliver true democratic government: that seems to be the verdict of history unfolding before our eyes. Cogently and persuasively, David Van Reybrouck pleads for a return to selection by lot, and outlines a range of well thought out plans for how sortitive democracy might be implemented. With the popular media and the political parties fiercely opposed to it, sortitive democracy will not find it easy to win acceptance. Nonetheless, it may well be an idea whose time has come.’ J.M. COETZEE ‘In compelling us to subject all our received ideas and deeply-held convictions to rigorous scrutiny, this fine iconoclastic work could not be more timely. David Van Reybrouck reveals the startling historical fact that the French and Americans chose the electoral method precisely because it was undemocratic and then goes on relentlessly to demonstrate that far from safeguarding our right to self-determination, elections are actually impeding our democracy.’ KAREN ARMSTRONG Our democracy is suffering from anorexia. Whereas it once fed on various forms of participation, these days it tries to survive on the thin gruel of a puny ritual: elections. We are neglecting our democracy at a time when the world is undergoing radical change. The traditional pillars of society are disappearing, people are better educated, information travels faster, the media have become much more commercial and social media are creating new forms of political awareness. All this demands more involvement, meaningful participation and greater transparency. David Van Reybrouck, who founded the successful citizens’ initiative G1000 in Belgium, examines new ways of revitalizing our impotent democracy and involving citizens in everything that concerns us in society. Here he issues an urgent call for change. World rights: De Bezige Bij - Rights sold: The Bodley Head (World English), Wallstein Verlag (Germany), Taurus (World Spanish), Social Sciences Academic Press (China), Tiderne Skifter (Denmark), Actes Sud (France), Feltrinelli (Italy), Galapagos (Korea), Font Forlag (Norway) - Political non-fiction - pages 174 - 2013; 2016 with a new afterword - Full English, French, etc. translations available
de bezige bij present at the fair
Francien Schuursma Publisher De Bezige Bij
Haye Koningsveld Editor-in-chief non-fiction De Bezige Bij
Jacques Schalken Editor non-fiction De Bezige Bij
Peter van der Zwaag Editor-in-chief translated fiction De Bezige Bij
Marjolein Schurink Publisher Cargo
Chris Kooi Editor De Bezige Bij; Cargo
Arend Hosman Publisher Thomas Rap
Marijke Nagtegaal Rights manager De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo
Uta Matten Rights manager De Bezige Bij; Thomas Rap; Cargo
THO MA S RA P
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