Daan Remmerts de Vries
The Witch of the North Wind (De Noordenwindheks)
A moving and imaginative double-sided book
Something very striking about Daan Remmerts de Vries’ De Noordenwindheks (‘The Witch of the North Wind’) is that if you turn it over you will see that it has two front covers. This is one book containing two interlinked novellas: one about eleven year-old Mori Brunèl and the other about Rifka Verdigaal who is the same age. It is up to the reader to decide which story to begin with.
Mori and Rifka’s paths accidentally cross in a hospital room as their voices find each other ‘somewhere’ between their beds which are separated by a grey curtain. Remmerts de Vries includes an illustration of a curtain in the middle of the book, making you realise that the children are inventing each other and their friendship, and that each story can be read from a different perspective. Rifka’s story reads as a flashback. She is in a place where time doesn’t exist and where ‘she never needs to wait to get better.’ The imaginative Rifka, who loves fairy tales, tells us very naturally and modestly about her serious skin condition. She tells us about her eccentric Uncle Gol, her clock-maker guardian who cares for her with love and affection.
She also tells us about her ‘floatings’ (out-of-body experiences) and her meetings with a ghost; about how she ended up in hospital and met clumsy, shy Mori – the only child of divorced parents with a tremendous sense of guilt and a life-threatening illness.
Mori’s time in hospital, told by an omniscient narrator, runs parallel to Rifka’s. Yet, both stories remain separate. If you are on Mori’s side of the curtain, you get a summary of Rifka’s fairy tale about the Witch of the North Wind who, with her icy breath, makes people ill, but when you are on Rifka’s side, you get to read the entire fairy tale.
The two moving, imaginative and humorous stories reinforce each other and eventually meet at the battle with the Witch of the North Wind that both children fight in their own way. Because of each other, their fantasies and their faith in a possible victory, the two children will find the strength to fight the fight.
Publisher
Querido
Singel 262
NL - 1016 AC Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 551 12 62
FAX +31 20 639 19 68
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.querido.nl
Publishing details
De Noordenwindheks (2004, 108 pp)
Age: 10+
Biography
Daan Remmerts de Vries (b. 1962) actually wanted to become a musician. He wrote and played his own music and tried to make a go of it. When this didn’t work, he decided to start writing. Since then, Remmerts de Vries has written and illustrated dozens of books and has won two ‘Vlag en Wimpel’ awards (for Mijn tuin, mijn tuin and for Willis), a Golden Slate Pencil for Godje and a Silver Slate Pencil for De Noordenwindheks. He also writes for adults; his second novel, Zo zal ik bij je zijn, came out in 2006.
Quotes
At the end (…) you want to turn the book round and start again, only to discover that this book is even richer and contains more layers than you first thought and that every sentence stands on its own.
Vrij Nederland
Daan Remmerts de Vries’ protagonists are very real – they remain children with whom young readers, too, can easily identify – not despite, but also because of its form.
NRC Handelsblad
Translations
- Die Nordwindhexe. Hamburg: Cecilie Dressler, 2006
- [(De noordenwindheks)]. Seoul: Darim, 2007
- Continued...