Anna Enquist
The Masterpiece (Het meesterstuk)
Anna Enquist has an innate talent for telling stories; they flow as naturally and spontaneously as a mountain stream. Her refined psychological insights clothe her characters in flesh and blood, and her musicality is remarkable, with never a false note.
The Masterpiece is based on Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, Enquist’s modern setting adding an extra dimension to the tale. Johan Steenkamer, a painter driven by ambition and lust, represents Don Juan; always the centre of attention, he aims to be the ultimate focus of everyone’s thoughts, but he is incapable of true love, friendship and intimacy. When his daughter dies, his wife mourns, while he can only lose himself in artistic and erotic adventures until he is utterly isolated, even from his wife. Yet he is able to demonstrate the astonishing power of art by brilliantly capturing his wife’s grief in a portrait he paints of her; he can give himself to art but not to people. Enquist’s portrayal of his tragic position is utterly convincing.
Enquist is one of the Netherlands’ best loved and most read authors. Over the years she has also built up a reputation abroad.
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
Publishing details
Het meesterstuk (1994, 292 pp, 100,000 words)
200,000 copies sold
Biography
Anna Enquist (b. 1945) is one of the most popular writers in the Netherlands. She trained in piano at the academy of music in The Hague and at the same time studied psychology in Leiden. When she made her debut as a poet in 1991 with the collection Soldatenliederen (Soldiers’ Songs), for which she was awarded the C. Buddingh Prize, she was working as a psychoanalyst. Since then she has devoted much of her time to writing. With her first two novels, Het meesterstuk (The Masterpiece, 1995) and Het geheim (The Secret, 1997), psychological novels in which classical music is central, Enquist quickly reached a broad readership. In 2002 she wrote the Book Week Gift, De ijsdragers (The Ice Carriers), and in 2005 she published the major historical novel De thuiskomst (The Homecoming), which focuses on James Cook’s wife Elizabeth Batts. For the French translation of this novel, she received the Prix du Livre Corderie Royale-Hermione. ‘Enquist understands emotion’ is how one critic has described the appeal of her work.
Quotes
The novel The Masterpiece fully lives up to its title.
Buchtipp
The absence of an all-knowing authorial voice is vital to the novel’s success.
Babelguides
Translations
- Il capolavoro. Venezia: Marsilio, 2001
- The masterpiece. London: The Toby Press, 1999
- Le chef-d'oeuvre. Arles: Actes Sud, 2001
- Continued...