A ‘lively book about mathematics’ opens our selection of recent notable non-fiction from the Netherlands. With enthusiasm and humour, young first-time writer Vincent van Noort tells of his passion for numbers and his personal connection with them, and explains why he believes that we all have such a connection. He convincingly demonstrates the beauty of mathematics.
Harry Mulisch, one of the greatest writers the Netherlands has produced and an international author of stature, died at his home in Amsterdam on Saturday 30 October. The Dutch Foundation For Literature mourns the loss of a great writer, a remarkable character and a literary friend.
Harry Mulisch was born in the Dutch city of Haarlem in 1927. His origins conceal the great tragedy of the twentieth century: ‘I am the Second World War,’ Mulisch said of himself. His father was Austro-Hungarian by birth, his mother a German-speaking Jew born in Antwerp.
This year’s selection opens with a book that is impressive in every sense, telling a great story that places the birth and development of the European Union in the context of the political history of Europe. Luuk van Middelaar was one of the Netherlands’ most promising philosophers when he made his debut ten years ago with Politicide (see QNF 2000). Since then he has gained direct political experience in Brussels and The Hague and used it to write this standard work.
Although we try not to count our chickens before they’ve hatched, over the course of the previous year the above Pamphlet has produced positive results, both nationally and internationally, giving the Dutch Foundation for Literature, the Flemish Literature Fund, the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, the Dutch Language Union and the Expertise Centre for Literary Translation grounds for optimism about the future.
Jan Wolkers died on 19 October 2007, at 1.30 p.m. to be precise. It was a week before his 82nd birthday. A couple of days prior to his death, when wife Katrina asked if he perhaps wanted something to eat, he had responded: ‘I have had enough.’ He subsequently fell into a deep sleep from which he never awoke. ‘I have had enough’ were the last words of a gifted, vital and versatile artist.
Normally, the 10 Books from Holland and Flanders brochure only mentions recently published Dutch-language books. However, this time we made an exception for two extraordinary novels. The death of Hugo Claus provided a reason to devote attention to his novel Een zachte vernieling (Mild Destruction) dating from 1988, in which the novelist describes, with irony and qualification, the pompous zeal of a group of artists. Last year, the CPNB distributed almost a million copies of Theo Thijssen’s novel De gelukkige klas (The Happy Class) to members of public libraries in the Netherlands and to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, in the framework of the ‘Reading in the Netherlands’ campaign. Thijssen’s novel, in which a teacher describes everyday occurrences in his class, first appeared in 1926, but the current discussion on the level of education in the Netherlands has ensured that the theme is still very relevant.
Dutch quality non-fiction covers a wide field and this year the subjects of the selected books are exceptionally diverse: the Scientific Revolution, the male sexual organ, space exploration, memory and ageing, problems surrounding immigration, the dilemmas of the humanitarian aid industry, and the lives of Sergei Diaghilev and Chet Baker.
For Quality Non-Fiction from Holland 2007 ten very different new titles have been selected. The first two deal with Islam, one a historical study and the other an investigation into modern Dutch multi-cultural society. In The Historical Mohammed, of which 7,000 copies have already been sold, Islam specialist Hans Jansen looks primarily at the legendary Mohammed as portrayed in old, unreliable biographies. Jansen wonders how generations of Western experts were able to follow the example of orthodox Muslims in accepting the old Arabic biographies as a reliable source. He argues that this is dangerous, since these biographies are marked by a bloodlust that is contagious even after fourteen centuries. A German edition of The Historical Mohammed will be published by C.H. Beck.
Features | News | Non-Fiction
Several weeks ago Henk Pröpper and Maarten Valken visited Istanbul, where a workshop was held for translators from Dutch into Turkish. During their trip they also spoke to the major Turkish publishers (most of them based in Istanbul). It became clear during their discussions that the Turkish publishing world is extremely interested in foreign literature, and Dutch is definitely included. Compared to most other countries, Turkey publishes a large number of translations, around 35% of all titles on offer, mostly from English and German.
In the report of the latest Non-fiction Conference (May 2006 in Amsterdam) you will find statements like: ‘American people should know what’s happening to the lives of people that were so influenced by decisions of a government that they supported’; ‘the book business now is doing entertainment and not culture’; ‘it is sad that in a country that claims to have formed the rights of man, freedom of expression is under threat from those who are responsible for upholding justice and that we are forced to depend on European institutions’;
In this section members of the Foundation’s staff provide a report on their work.