10 Books from Holland and Flanders Autumn 2008
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.
The other eight novels in the brochure have all been published recently: there are new novels by established authors such as Anna Enquist (Contrapunt, ‘Counterpoint’), Jan Siebelink (Suezkade) and Leon de Winter (Het recht op terugkeer, ‘The Right of Return’), debut novels by Vincent Overeem (Misfit) and Mariëtte Haveman (De foto van Faye Finsbury, ‘The Photo by Faye Finsbury’), comeback novels by Erik Vlaminck (Suikerspin, ‘Candy Floss’) and Jaap Scholten (De wet van Spengler, Spengler’s Law), and the Gouden Uil Award winner Het grote uitstel (‘The Big Delay’) by Marc Reugebrink. The new brochure can be downloaded here.