Paul Biegel
Runaway (Wegloop)
‘Runaway’ is the nickname of a boy who suffers from a strong desire to run away. He’s not bothered where he runs to, just so long as he can get away. Away from home, away from school, away from the village. But when he disappears to Paris and lands behind bars, it comes to an end: he has to go to sea, because you can’t run away from a boat, says his father.
Biegel interweaves throughout this story the tale of an Inca boy who, in the high mountains of Peru five centuries ago, has to take a case containing a vitally important state secret to Machu Picchu, the holy city in the clouds, and deliver it into the hands of the local ruler. The two boys live in very different centuries, but have a great deal in common.
They are very single-minded and both have a goal: for one boy the goal has been defined, for the other it becomes clear in an extraordinary ending. Biegel tells this original story in the exceptional and appealing way that is unique to him. A typycal Biegel hit.
Publisher
Holland
Spaarne 110
NL-2011 CM Haarlem
TEL. +31 23 532 30 61
FAX +31 23 534 29 08
E-mail: info@uitgeverijholland
Website: www.uitgeverijholland.nl
Publishing details
Wegloop (2005, 96 pp)
Biography
Paul Biegel (1925-2006) dreamed of becoming a pianist, but finally, by way of a failed law degree and a period spent in the USA, ended up as a writer for a television guide and a cartoon studio. In 1962 he debuted as a children’s author with De gouden gitaar (The Golden Guitar). A new book followed almost every year.
In the nearly forty years Paul Biegel wrote for children, he enjoyed unabated success with both readers and critics. Oblivious to passing fashions and visibly enjoying playing with language, he related his timeless tales of dwarfs, princesses, witches, robbers and talking animals. His world was that of the fairytale, with a riddle to be solved, a scraggy hero and the eternal struggle between Good and Evil.
Some of Biegel’s stories are of the adventurous, unpretentious kind, such as De kleine kapitein (The Little Captain, 1971). De tuinen van Dorr (The Gardens of Dorr, 1969), Nachtverhaal (Night Story, 1992) and De soldatenmaker (The Soldier-Maker, 1994), on the other hand, are based on great themes such as friendship and love, loneliness, fear, jealousy, death and war. Biegel’s is a unique voice in Dutch children’s literature; a ‘master narrator with a robber’s heart’, as he has been called. The language in his books shimmers and sings and the adventures he devises are breathtaking, whether they are about a princess, a dwarf or a bunch of mice. Biegel’s work earned him many awards.
Website: www.paul-biegel.com