Singel Publishers Rights Guide Spring 2021
Singel Publishers Weteringschans 259 1017 XJ Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone: + 31 (0)20 760 72 10 www.singeluitgeverijen.nl Foreign rights: Jolijn Spooren | j.spooren@singeluitgeverijen.nl Martijn Prins | m.prins@singeluitgeverijen.nl Luciënne van der Leije | l.van.der.leije@singeluitgeverijen.nl
Hotlist • When a family cares about the apostate Somali babysitter, they are drawn into religious conflicts • In her exciting new novel, Durlacher shows that the world is not so black and white **** de Volkskrant • Top 10 bestseller with 20,000 copies sold Jessica Durlacher
The Voice The Voice is set against the backdrop of the great events that ushered in this millennium - a rich novel with a driving force, about family, loyalty, and the great sacrifice that demands people s commitment. A devout Somali asylum seeker joins the family of Zelda and Bor as a babysitter, and to their surprise turns out to be a phenomenal singer. Her name is Amal. She is so good that Zelda and Bor sign her up for the popular talent show The Voice. During her spectacular first performance, Amal surprises the audience with a dramatic gesture that leads to a tidal wave of threats. The family feels called to protect it and is thus drawn into conflicts that will change their safe world forever.
Novel | 432 pages | 118,000 words | February 2021 Rights sold: German (Diogenes) On The Voice: How important are your ideals peril? This novel does not give any solutions. Ultimately, The Voice tells us, the war must be fought in our own heads. **** de Volkskrant -focused writing, with just the right amount timing and skillfully built De Groene Amsterdammer
sense of
Jessica Durlacher (1961) is the author of bestsellers such as: The Conscience, The Daughter, The Hero and Emoticon. Her work has been translated into Bulgarian, Danish, German, Italian, Russian and Swedish and won her a number of literary prizes.
English sample available.
© Billie Glaser, edited by Suzanne Arts
Hotlist •
A new hig Parool • Already 12,000 copies sold
Het
Esther Gerritsen
The Return Jennie was five years old when her father killed himself. That was twenty years ago. She never wanted to believe in his self-chosen death. Her brother Max, who was ten at the time, does not like to talk about the past. But Jennie ca loved ones from the hereafter. He has answers to Jen uestions, but no one hears the dead. When their mother Jennie realises that she too will soon be unable
the tensions in dysfunctional family settings, often in a drily comic manner. What impressed me most about The Return was the ingenious kaleidoscopic narration which effortlessly shifts between perspectives as a simple drama morphs into a murder mystery tale. I love translating Esther's seemingly effortless pared-down prose which manages to convey so much depth and under Michele Hutchinson (Booker International Prize-winning translator for The Discomfort of Evening) Novel | 256 pages | 46,500 words | September 2020 Rights sold: Spanish for Argentina (Caballo Negro) On The Return: A crime plot rarely wor
**** NRC Handelsblad
Esther Gerritsen transpierces her characters. ***** Elsevier Weekblad
Esther Gerritsen (1972) is an established novelist and playwright. Her successful novels Craving (shortlisted for the Vondel Prize and Libris Literature Prize) and Roxy (shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize) were published in English and for both books film rights have been sold. In 2014 Gerritsen was awarded the Frans Kellendonk prize for her body of work. She was the author of the gift of the Dutch Book Week 2016, Brother, which was printed at 700,000 copies and published in German, French, Spanish and Turkish.
English sample available © Karoly Effenberger
Hotlist • A book full of zeitgeist and humour about the fall of the white man A satirical and sometimes downright cynical view of wokeness. ★★★★ Knack Focus • Selected for the Dutch Foundation for Lit •
Henk van Straten
Ernest Hemingway Is Cancelled They arrive just at the right time, the two roofers who stand on the doorstep of the nameless protagonist, photo curator of a museum of modern art. For this left-handed intellectual, on antidepressants and unsure of his role as a father, ex-husband and white man, the world has only gotten more complicated. He wants to fight for something, but for what? Meanwhile, his exhibition about the writer Ernest Hemingway provokes the ire of feminists, anti-racists and animal activists alike. More and more often he thinks of his friend Semmie, who committed suicide. Only when the pragmatic roofers take him to a training in medieval sword fighting, where men are allowed to be men, does he decide to take matters into his own hands again.
Novel | 288 pages | 79,000 words | December 2020 On Ernest Hemingway Is Canceled: is his portrayal of the personal, of individual suffering of his strengths and weaknesses, his humanity and his interactions NRC Handelsblad his is not just a novel about urgent issues, but also one that explicitly takes inventory of the values of the white man, the most criticized Trouw Both the protagonist's blind spots and his criticism of over-political correctness are captured in sharp, convincing sentences. Het Parool
Henk van Straten (1980) is an author, columnist and journalist. He previously wrote the novel Praying and Falling (2015) and two memoirs: -Brother Here, which won the 2018 Best Book for Young People award and Notes from the Halfway House. In 2020 his thriller novella Bad Blood was published to critical acclaim. Along with Ernest Hemingway Is Cancelled, it makes up part of a thematic trilogy about the has been nominated for numerous prestigious literary awards.
English sample available © Bianca Sistermans
Hotlist • The Solidarity Group was named one of the best books of 2020 by HP/DE TIJD, De Groene Amsterdammer and NRC Handelsblad. • Shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2021 • Winner of the BNG Bank Literature Prize 2020
Merijn de Boer
The Solidarity Group What if at the end of your life you realise you have only been truly happy for one year of it? One night in New York, diplomat Bernhard Wekman looks back on the eighties, when he met a group of idealists from Haarlem. They called themselves The Solidarity Group, were members of the PPR (Political Party of Radicals) or the PSP (Pacifist Socialist Party) and donated 10 percent of their income to third world projects. They enjoyed folk dance, crafts and nature. Bernhard n at all. Nevertheless, he pretended their ideals where his own. In this satirical and compelling novel, Merijn de Boer tells the story of a group of people tryi care less but falls in love for the first time in his life. This novel is set in New York, Haarlem and Jerusalem.
Novel | 400 pages | 96,000 words | August 2020 The press on The Solidarity Group: image of the left-
De Telegraaf
Noordhollands Dagblad el.
r is a compelling and very witty writ
NRC Handelsblad
Entertaini s clever how he subtly makes fun of his characters and their noble motives, without making caricatures of t HP/ De tijd
Merijn de Boer (1982) studied in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. In 2011, his short-story collection Fleeing the Nest was published, for which he won the Lucy B. en C.W. van der Hoogt Prize 2012. His first novel The Night (2014) was longlisted for the AKO Literature prize. In 2015, Merijn de Boer was chosen as Literary Talent of the Year by De Volkskrant. His second novel Ye Hunting Lodge was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the BNG Literature Prize. Merijn de Boer was an editor at Uitgeverij Van Oorschot for nine years and at literary magazine Tirade for seven years. English sample available © Chantal Heijnen
Hotlist • The first comprehensive study of its kind, on the tragic camp fates of Anne Frank and each of her seven companions in hiding. • Translation rights sold to France, Germany, Russia, Spain and Brazil.
Bas von Benda-Beckmann
After the Annex On 27 January 1945 Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz by Russian soldiers. At that point not only his journey home started, but also his long quest to find out what had happened to his wife Edith, his daughters Margot and Anne and the four other people with whom he had been in hiding in the Annex at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam: Herman and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter and dentist Fritz Pfeffer. In the months after his liberation Otto Frank would discover that he is the only survivor out of these eight people. After the Annex continues the journey that Otto began. It is the ultimate attempt, based on thorough research in archives and available eye witness accounts, to reconstruct as precisely as possible what happened to the eight people in hiding after their arrest
Non-fiction | 416 pages | 95,000 words | October 2020 Rights sold: French (Notes de Nuit), German (Secession Verlag), Spanish and Galician (Kalandraka Editora), Catalan (Kalandraka Catalunya), Portuguese (Globo, Brazil only), Russian (Knizhniki)
The press on After the Annex:
the eight persons i
da-Beckmann] comes very close to retracing the camp experiences from NRC Handelsblad
Everyone should read this unbearable book, though you actually would never recommend Trouw
Bas von Benda-Beckmann (1976) is a historian and currently works as a researcher at the Anne Frank House. He is also the author of The Velser Affair, shortlisted for the Libris history award, and the equally acclaimed Hotel Orange. After the Annex was researched and written in collaboration with Erika Prins, Esther Göbel and Gertjan Broek
English summary available
© Lionne Hietberg
Hotlist • • •
The Discovery of Heaven but
Radio 1 Het Parool
Already 5,000 copies sold
Frank Westerman
The Cosmic Comedy The Cosmic Comedy is a philosophical meditation on the longing for a better world ney revolves around Westerman wn axis, Westerbork in the Dutch province of Drenthe where he grew up. There the observatory with its world-class telescope Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), brainchild of pioneer Jan Oort, scans the sky with its majestic satellite dishes. On the site of the former Nazi transit camp. Nowhere is heaven so close to hell. Beyond Westerbork, the author takes the reader to Franeker planetarium, the oldest working planetarium in the world. There in 1774, Eise Eisinga, a wool-comber by trade, built a model of the solar system in his living room to reassure people that a doomsday prediction that the planets would spiral out of their orbits to be burned up by the sun could not be true. We also travel to Italy, where three centuries after Dante, Galileo Galilei, the father of observational astronomy, shifted Earth from the centre of the universe for good when he discove ons. In poetic prose, Frank Westerman takes the reader on a grand tour through time, taking in our tilting image of the heavens, with or without god. Westerman comes to the conclusion: stargazing, driven by wonder, changes our view of the heavens; while space travel, driven by rivalry, changes our view of the earth. From Copernicus, Huygens and Schiaparelli to Juri Gagarin and the first female robot in space, The Cosmic Comedy is science non-fiction at its most mind-blowing. Non-fiction | 284 pages | 61,000 words | February 2021
On The Cosmic Comedy: handled by Westerman with verve, weaving together reportage, childhood memories, essay, historical treatise and philosophical reflectio man, the cosmos and the desire to reach further than NRC Handelsblad
Frank Westerman (1964) studied tropical agricultural engineering at Wageningen University. He was a correspondent for de Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad in Belgrade and Moscow. His books include The Blackest Scenario (1995), about the fall of Srebrenica, The Republic of Grain (1999), Engineers of the Soul (2002), Ararat (2007) and Br fect Horse (2010). His books have received many awards and nominations both at home and abroad. El Negro and Me (2004) won him the Golden Owl Literature Prize in 2005. © Lionne Hietberg
English sample available
Hotlist • Entered the bestseller list upon publication • Reprinted 8 times since publication in March 2021
Caroline de Gruyter
It W
Get Any Better
A journey through the Habsburg Empire and the European Union Europeans often complain that the EU is divided, slow and weak. Believe it or not, the Habsburg Empire was the same. Playing for time, avoiding conflict, working on never-ending reforms and finding ugly compromises were key characteristics of Habsburg governance. By kicking the can down the road fortwursteln successive emperors managed to keep many nations, language groups and cultures safe and sound under one roof for about six hundred years. What are the Habsburg lessons for th? And should we finally accept the EU as it is: a benign empire of sorts, in permanent change, unfinished per definition?
Non-fiction | Illustrated | 248 pages | 68,000 words | March 2021
On It W
Get Any Better:
De Gruyter is an erudite tour guide. **** de Volkskrant Wonderfully meandering between anecdotes, without much pretension, sometimes funny, often smart and always right. **** NRC Handelsblad It Won t Get Any Better offers many valuable insights and historical perspectives Trouw
Caroline de Gruyter is a Europe correspondent and columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. She is currently based in Oslo. Caroline has covered European politics for the past twenty years, from Brussels and elsewhere in Europe. She has won several awards. She is a regular contributor to Carnegie Europe and Foreign Policy, and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. She was previously based in the Gaza strip, Jerusalem, Brussels (twice), Geneva and Vienna. She has written four books. Book number five, published in March 2021, is a comparison between the Habsburg Empire and the European Union. English sample available
Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold • •
A pitch-black novel about a universe dominated by deceit and hypocrisy Top 10 bestseller with 55,000 copies sold
Pieter Waterdrinker
The Rat of Amsterdam Ruben Ivanovich Katz is Latvian, Russian, Jewish and holds a passport to th ower¬bulb kingdom by the sea . He and his parents left the Soviet Union less than a year before the country fell apart, traveling to Poland, Germany and the Netherlands, with Israel as the intended final destination they never reached. Years later Ruben starts off wor which people play with a lottery ticket based on their fingerprints. Later he returns to Russia, where he puts his rhetorical and creative genius to use Front, oup that organizes a reconnaissance trip through Russia for Europeans seeking to emigrate. When his childhood sweetheart Phaedra drowns, he gets the blame. Ruben Katz, who is writing all this down at the age of 41 in a Dutch prison cell, swears he is innocent of P eath that his life has just happened to him, including his metamorphosis from human to rat. Pieter Waterdrinker book is a hellish indictment of the charity industry, the fraudulent use of EU funds, and shysters who pay gratuitous lip service to altruism but are really just looking to line their own pockets. English sample available Novel | 592 pages |194,825 words | July 2020
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Historical novel on the life of Edgar Degas by renowned author, 45,000 copies sold
Arthur Japin
Mrs. Degas The place is Paris, the year is 1912. Degas, the painter, is a grumpy old man, by now virtually blind. The night before he is forced to move out of the house rth of paintings, papers and documents, a young American woman shows up at his door offering to help him organize his archives. It turns out that she plays a special role in his family history. Her cryptic reports of her visits, and her feverish research in what appears to be an attempt to shed light on a painful episode , form the asterful reconstruction hovering somewhere between fact and fiction. and impossible love of the pai life: his blind Creole cousin, Estelle. During a visit to his family in New Orleans, where his brother Ren ́ Estelle s husband ran a business, Degas painted a portrait of her arranging flowers. Years earlier, this same Estelle, newly widowed, had fled the American Civil War to move into her painter cousi . Rights Sold: Italian (Ugo Guanda), Czech (Argo) English sample available Novel | 304 pages | 75,000 words | September 2020
Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold • •
Over 300,000 copies sold in the Netherlands and rights sold to 21 countries Film rights sold
Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer
Grand Hotel Europe A writer takes residence in the illustrious but decaying Grand Hotel Europe, to think about where things went wrong with Clio, with whom he fell in love in Genoa and moved to Venice. He reconstructs a compelling story of love in times of mass tourism, about their trips to Malta, Palmaria, Portovenere and the Cinque Terre and their thrilling search for the last painting of Caravaggio. Meanwhile, he becomes fascinated by the mysteries of Grand Hotel Europe and gets more and more involved with the memorable characters who inhabit it, and who seem to come from a more elegant time. All the while, globalization seems to be grabbing hold even on this place frozen in time. Rights sold: Bulgarian (Colibri) Croatian (V.B.Z.), Czech (Host), English (UK & Commonwealth, 4th Estate), English (North American, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Finnish (Gummerus), French (Presses de la Cité/Feux Croisés), German (Piper Verlag), Hebrew (Modan), Hungarian (Gondolat), Italian (Nutrimenti), Lithuanian (Alma Littera), Macedonian (Antolog), Norwegian (Gyldendal), Polish (Eperons-Ostrogi), Portuguese (Porta Editora), Romanian (Nemira), Russian (Mann, Ivanov & Ferber), Serbian (Laguna) Spanish (Acantilado), Can Yayinlari (Turkish) Novel | 552 pages | 193,864 words | December 2018
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An exciting thriller set in the world of tech industry Shortlisted for Gouden Strop Thriller of the Year Award 2020
Jens Vern
The Power of K. In this unsparing family history, Alan Noland distils his father's life in the Dutch East Indies into one furious utterance. He reads about his work as an interpreter during the war with Japan, his life as an assassin, and his decision to murder Indonesians in the service of the Dutch without any conscience. How he fled to the Netherlands to escape being executed as a traitor and met Alan's mother soon after. As he reads his father's story Alan begins to understand how war transformed his father into the monster he knew. Birney exposes a crucial chapter in Dutch and European history that was deliberately concealed behind the ideological facade of postwar optimism. Readers of this superb novel will find that it reverberates long afterwards in their memory.
English sample available Thriller | 384 pages | 98,000 words| April 2020
Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold • •
Over 40,000 copies sold, longlisted for the International Booker Prize, Libris Literature Prize and the Bookspot Literature Prize 2018 Robben is wonderful at drawing characters with just a few del a focused close-up. The New York Times
Jaap Robben
Summer Brother Thirteen-year-old Brian lives with his father in a caravan on a remote plot. B s mentally and physically disabled brother Lucien has been admitted to an institution. Because of a renovation during the summer it is necessary for Lucien to be cared er, mainly motivated by the prospect of receiving compensation, brings Lucien to the caravan and puts young Brian in cha care. But how to talk to someone who does not speak? How to care for someone if you do not know what they need? How to make the right choices if you still have so much to discover yourself? Rights sold: Bulgarian (ICU), Czech (Vy ), Russian (Mann, Ivanov & Ferber), Slovenian (Mladinska Knjiga), Turkish (Epsilon), World English (World Editions) and film rights English translation available Novel | 320 pages| 65,000 words | September 2018
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Debut novel by The literary talent of 2021 (De Volkskrant) A rollicking riot of a book. You find yourself falling from one surprise into the next, trying desperately to gain a foothold, in scintillating prose where sound, rhythm and associations turn out to be almost as NRC Handelsblad
Joost Oomen
The Pear Song In this fairy tale for adults, Disney World employee Gabriel falls in love with the purple Beet Queen, who was born from a pot of beet soup. When their protest action against the amusement park fails, the Beet Queen follows her father to off in search of the love of his life, a colleague who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. With highly original, colourful illustrations and a poetic style, The Pear Song is a plea for finding joy in the everyday.
English sample available Novel | 285 pages | 44,000 words| October 2020
Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold • •
20,000 copies sold, top 10 bestseller An inspiring and well-researched book for people who want to invest in a healthy life
Erik Scherder & Leonard Hofstra
Take your Brain to Heart There has been a pandemic for years, called physical inactivity . Living an inactive life increases the risks of obesity, cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. People affected by these inflictions appear to be (extra) vulnerable to other diseases, such as viral infections. Exercise and a healthy diet have a great influence on the heart, brain and immune system. Exercise and certain nutrients stimulate the inner wall of the blood vessels to produce nitric oxide (NO), which causes the blood vessels to dilate. A stronger blood circulation has a positive effect on the cardiovascular system, the brain and our immune system. This book is both accessible and challenging in explaining how often we should exercise, and which nutrients we need in this process. This is a book for people who really like to invest in a healthy life. English sample available Non-fiction | Illustrated | 224 pages | 60,000 words | October 2020
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Instantly recognizable for both baby-boomers and millennials too crazy to be true, but never journey. NRC Handelsblad
is a breath-taking
Wim Willems
The Globetrotters In The Globetrotters, we follow the journey of a group of young people from working-class families, idealists who break free from the environment they grew up in. These three men, later joined by one woman, are vegetarians and pacifists who do not smoke or drink but learn the world language Esperanto and look for freedom in nature. In 1911, they start a journey on foot, penniless, but making just enough money along the way by selling postcards with their portraits and ideals printed on them. The Globetrotters is an account of their walking journey across Europe and the Middle East just before the First World War a time when tourism was still for the elite, and during which they witness ever increasing ethnic tension, especially at the Balkans and in Palestine. But is also an account of their lives after their foot journey, when each of them got caught up in the wheels of the history in their own way. In a way, this is a book with a tragic ending, but it also shows how inspiring and guiding this special journey has been for the children and grandchildren of the globetrotters to this day. English sample available Non-fiction | Illustrated | 105,000 words | September 2020
Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold • •
By the award-winning author of The Boer War, which sold over 80,000 copies and was translated into English, German, French and Chinese The history of the Dutch East Indies told through experiences from both sides of the war
Martin Bossenbroek
Diponegoro s Revenge The start and the end of the Dutch East Indies The latest book by Martin Bossenbroek tells the story of the violent start and end of the Dutch East Indies told through the experiences of the lead characters from both sides. In the first part on the Java-War (1825-1830), Prince Diponegoro loses out after many years of massive and fanatic resistance to the phlegmatic army commander Hendrik de Kock. In the second part, about the War for Decolonisation (1945-1949), the charismatic, nationalistic leader, Soekarno. He, inspired by Diponegoro, successfully combines all forces against Lieutenant-Governor General, the tireless dreamer Huib van Mook. D Revenge is a majestic epic in acts, about a heart stopping showdown between the Tiger (The Netherlands) and the Buffalo (Indonesia).
Non-fiction | Illustrated | 576 pages | 200,000 words | November 2020
Classics •
A masterpiece of ironic black humour
• Full of s
European
literature Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung
Willem Elsschot
Villa des Roses Set in a down-market Paris boarding house before World War I, this novel is a masterpiece of ironic black humour. more affection on her pet monkey, Chico, than on her husband, an embittered ex-solicitor. Among the guests are the ancient but mischievous Madame Gendron, the suicidal Brizard, naïve Norwegian Aasgaard, three assorted Eastern European females and the bumptious young German businessman Grünewal narrative is taken up with subsequent abandonment of the widowed maid Louise. fence, the terrifying revenge exacted by Madame Gendron for her humiliation b to her village after having despaired of finding her vanished lover. This is a tour de force by one of Dutchylists. English translation available Novella | 116 pages | 15.000 words | 1913
Film Rights Sold Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer
Jaap Robben
Grand Hotel Europa
Summer Brother
Feature film rights sold to BlazHoffski
Feature film rights sold to Family Affair Films
Bart Moeyaert
Christine Otten
The Last Poets Feature film rights sold to De Mensen
Television series rights sold to Flying Tiger Entertainment
Annet Schaap
A.F.Th. van der Heijden
Lampie
Play Dead
Audiovisual rights sold to Pupkin Film
Feature film rights sold to Revolver Film
Josephine Rombouts
Pieter Waterdrinker
Cliffrock Castle
The German Wedding
Television series rights sold to Fiction Valley
Feature film rights sold to West Park Productions
Anna Woltz
Zandstra & Pottjewijd
Shark s Teeth
XTC
Feature film rights sold to BIND Film & TV
Documentary series rights sold to Submarine
Contact for film rights: Bram Kleiweg : b.kleiweg@singeluitgeverijen.nl Jolijn Spooren : j.spooren@singeluitgeverijen.nl
Singel Publishers rights team Bram Kleiweg Film & television rights
Sander van Vlerken Publisher Athenaeum
Patricia de Groot Editor Querido
Willemijn Tillmans Editor Nijgh & Van Ditmar
Esther Hendriks Editor De Arbeiderspers The foreign rights team From left to right: Jolijn Spooren, Tjarda Sikkema, Luciënne van der Leije & Martijn Prins
Singel Publishers Weteringschans 259 1017 XJ Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone: + 31 (0)20 760 72 10 Foreign rights: foreignrights@singeluitgeverijen.nl www.singeluitgeverijen.nl
Translation grants
Korea: geeniehan@mmagency.co.kr China & Taiwan: grayhawk@grayhawk-agency.com Culinary titles: contact@anetteriedel.com Dutch Foundation for Literature: Nieuwe Prinsengracht 89 1018 VR Amsterdam The Netherlands t +31 (0)20 520 73 00
Foreign publishers wishing to publish translations of books by Singel Publishers may apply for a subsidy towards the translation costs. The Dutch Foundation for Literature exists to promote interest in Dutch language literature abroad. Further information and Fiction: Barbara den Ouden | b.den.ouden@letterenfonds.nl an application form are to be found on www.letterenfonds.nl
Non-Fiction: Mireille Berman | m.berman@letterenfonds.nl