Maarten ’t Hart
The Sundial (De Zonnewijzer)
Ingenious and totally absorbing
Maarten ’t Hart’s new novel The Sundial, is engrossing. It opens with the central character, Leonie Kuyper, attending the funeral of her best friend Roos Berczy, who has died of sunstroke. Leonie has always felt somewhat overshadowed by Roos. Although both were good-looking, Roos was far more striking than Leonie and a brilliant pharmacological research assistant to boot. Roos turns out to have made Leonie her sole heir, provided that she moves into Roos’ apartment and cares for her cats. Naturally she is eager to fulfill her best friend’s last wishes. Leonie, an impoverished translator, becomes the owner of a beautiful apartment, a large portfolio of common stocks, and an expensive wardrobe.
Gradually Leonie assumes Roos’ identity. By wearing her clothes and make-up, she begins to resemble her deceased friend ever more closely. Partly as a result, Roos’ past starts to crowd in on Leonie. There are telephone calls from and later meetings with Fred, a construction worker, who can’t believe that Roos died a natural death. Questions arise that demand answers. What brought the elegant Roos into contact with Fred and his friends? How could such a sun worshipper have died of sunstroke? Her curiosity piqued, Leonie starts looking for answers and reveals herself to be a first-rate detective. ’t Hart casually increases the tension by expanding the riddles. Was Roos, a chemist, involved in the manufacture of the illegal drug Ecstasy? But Leonie is also confronted with the possibility that Roos had information about the falsification of research findings and might have been murdered by a colleague. And then there’s the riddle of exactly how Roos died. In the meantime the murderer, alarmed by Leonie’s detective work, swings into action – and a startling denouement follows. The Sundial is ingenious and totally absorbing.
Publisher
De Arbeiderspers
Herengracht 370-372
NL - 1016 CH Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 524 75 00
FAX +31 20 622 49 37
E-mail: info@arbeiderspers.nl
Website: www.arbeiderspers.nl
Rights
The Susijn Agency
E-mail: info@thesusijnagency.com
Website: www.thesusijnagency.com
Publishing details
De Zonnewijzer (2002, 240 pp)
25,000 copies sold
Biography
Maarten ’t Hart (b. 1944) made his debut under the name Martin Hart with the novel Stenen voor een ransuil (Stones for a Long-Eared Owl, 1971). He studied biology in Leiden and worked as an ethologist at Leiden University. One of the most important themes in his oeuvre is his childhood in a Calvinist community and his distancing himself from it. His passions for nature and music also constantly crop up in his work. ’t Hart broke through to a wide audience with his melancholy novel about meeting his teenage love: Een vlucht regenwulpen (A Flight of Curlews, 1978). Many novels, short-story and essay collections later, ’t Hart, with his authentic tone and work which often touches upon the tension between biography and fiction, has grown to be one of the most popular and most translated of Dutch authors. In an interview he said: ‘What I like about literature is that one can show a compressed piece of one’s most intimate self.’ Some of his other novels are Het woeden der gehele wereld (The Fury of the Whole World, 1993), a Bildungsroman and a thriller in one, De zonnewijzer (The Sundial, 2002), Lotte Weeda (2004) and Het psalmenoproer (Psalms and Riots, 2006), a historical novel.
Quotes
The pleasure of conceiving the continuously heaving developments is evident,as is, above all, the pleasure of the author in projecting herself into theworld of a woman who disguises herself as another woman.
Trouw
Translations
- Die Sonnenuhr, oder das geheime Leben meiner Freundin Roos. Zürich etc.: Arche, 2003
- The sundial. London: Arcadia, 2004
- Solvisaren. Stockholm: Atlantis, 2003
- Continued...
Rights sold
- Livros do Brasil (Lisboa, )
- Sandesh (Dhaka, )
- Continued...