P.F. Thomése

Biography

P.F. Thomése (b. 1958) won the AKO Literature Prize with his first book, the short-story collection Zuidland (South Land), in 1991. He went on to publish two novels, Heldenjaren (Heroic Years, 1994) and Het zesde bedrijf (The Sixth Act, 1999), and another collection of short stories, Haagse liefde en De vieze engel (Love in The Hague and The Dirty Angel, 1994). Thomése made his international breakthrough with the memoir Schaduwkind (Shadow Child, 2003), which has meanwhile been sold to more than 15 countries. In 2005 he published Izak, followed in 2007 by Vladiwostok!

Titles

The Sixth Act

(Het zesde bedrijf, 1999)

In Het zesde bedrijf P.F. Thomése tells the life story of Etta Palm (1743-99), who was born in Groningen and lived in Paris as the Baroness d’Aelders. She was one of the first women to throw herself into the political turmoil of the French Revolution. ‘Etta Palm was a sort of Mata Hari of the eighteenth century,’ said the writer in an interview. ‘What attracted her to me were the clichés about attractive women who end up in politics – seduction, opportunism. She was supposed to have been a spy for the Prussians, the Republic of the Netherlands and the French.’ Continued...

Shadow Child

(Schaduwkind, 2003)

This is a record in just over one hundred pages of P.F. Thomése’s thoughts and feelings following the sudden death of his baby daughter Isa, only a few weeks old. He dissects his own desperation. Not in any dramatic lament, but in precise, carefully worded notes. He divulges few details of the death itself. We are not told its cause or which hospital she was taken to. Shadow Child is the story of a search, a search for meaning, for understanding, for something to hold on to. Continued...

Izak

(Izak, 2005)

Taking into account the name of the title character, Izak would seem to form a counterpart to Thomése’s successful previous book Schaduwkind (Shadow Child, 2003), in which he tells the poignant story of his daughter Isa, who died soon after birth. In Izak, Thomése explains briefly that Izak ‘was written with the same yearning to lose myself, to wander through an impenetrable wood and thus rediscover life.’ Of course, Izak has become a completely different book – it is a fairytale told by a small boy. Continued...

Vladivostok!

(Vladiwostok!, 2007)

P. F.Thomése broke through internationally in 2003 with Schaduwkind (Shadow Child), the heartbreaking story of the death of his newborn daughter, Isa. The contrast with his most recent novel couldn’t be greater: Vladivostok! is political satire about power shifting to the media, which, through polls and spin-doctored news, manipulates public opinion. Thomése has used pornography as his vehicle, reinstating this genre as the critical instrument it was originally in the eighteenth century. This vision combines power and porn, both as sinister as they are banal. Continued...