Books

Authors

Directory of Translators

Grants Awarded

Grants

Discover

About the Foundation

Catalogues

Contact

An overview of recent highlights, by genre

Discover authors, by genre

Download publications here

Books & Authors

Find a translator in database of accredited literary translators.

How to get accredited as a literary translator

Sign Up as a Translator

Translators

Translation Database

Discover who we are and what we do

Frequently Asked Questions

Discover everything the Dutch Foundation for Literature is organizing

Programs

An overview of recently awarded translation grants

Departments and staff

Get in touch

Een schitterend gebrek (In Lucia’s Eyes, 2003) won him the Libris Literature Prize in 2004. His other great historical novels – Someone Found and Vaslav – were also worldwide successes. His books have sold more than one and a half million copies in the Netherlands alone and have been published in more than twenty languages. What Silence Wants (2022) has been on the Dutch bestseller list since its publication and has so far sold over 55,000 copies.

Arthur Japin

When Casanova returns to the Italian manor, Lucia has disappeared, supposedly because she has become pregnant by a messenger and has run away with him. Casanova is consumed by regret at not acting when he had the chance. Years later, on a visit to Amsterdam, in 1758, travelling under his nom de plume Chevalier de Seingalt, he sees her again, in a brothel. She has changed so much that he barely recognizes her: ‘Lucia was not so much ugly,’ writes Casanova, ‘as something much worse: repugnant.’ In this historical novel Arthur Japin speculates on what could have happened to Lucia. He proposes in In Lucia’s Eyes that she hadn’t got pregnant, but had suffered a worse fate in a world where a woman was judged solely on the basis of her appearance: she caught smallpox which left her face so disfigured that she was afraid to look Casanova in the eye again. Lucia had been unwilling to provoke his pity or compromise his reputation and position by holding him to his promise.She felt she had had no choice but to flee and earn her living as a prostitute, hidden behind a veil that she never removes and an alias Galathea de Pompignac. When Casanova turns up in Amsterdam, his desire for her is reawakened. They try to outdo each other in razor-sharp dialogues which are reminiscent of the verbal sparring matches between Mme. de Maintenon and Comte du Valmont in Laclos’ famous Les liaisons dangereuses; Arthur Japin plays with bourgeois, eighteenth-century conventions to the hilt. The tragic love of Giacomo and Lucia is continually strained by worldly, emotional and philosophical differences, between men and women, outer and inner beauty, reason and intuition, and imagination and reality, all typical of the Enlightenment, as well as of the ambiguity that love still possesses, even now.With this novel Japin has won the Libris Literature Prize for best novel of the year 2003.

A beautifully constructed story, suffused with the atmosphere of an Enlightenment novel. (…) Simply put, a rich novel.

Japin has written an engaging, exciting and moving novel, complete with a solid plot, witty dialogue, surprising twists and an unexpected denouement.

Book

Een schitterend gebrek

Arthur Japin found his inspiration for In 'Lucia’s Eyes' in an episode in the life of Giacomo Casanova, philanderer and bon vivant. In his memoirs Casanova tells of being invited to the country estate of Pasiano as a sixteen-year-old and falling hopelessly in love with the breathtaking Lucia, two years his junior. She has only one splendid flaw: ‘She is too young.’ Because of Lucia’s genuine innocence he does not bed her, promising instead to return in six months to ask for her hand in marriage.

In Lucia’s Eyes

Anna Witsen grows up in an affluent family in Amsterdam. Singing is her passion, but for someone from her milieu a woman pursuing a career as a singer is inconceivable. Her father, though a great lover of the arts, only allows her to use her beautiful voice at home. It’s the late nineteenth century – a time when women are supposed to be wives and mothers and can only appear in public with a male chaperone.Things are completely different for her brother Willem, who by dint of his gender is given every opportunity to develop his talent as an artist. He and his friends form a collective of iconoclastic writers, painters and composers who seek to usher in a new era in art and literature. Staid bourgeois morality is to make way for fire and passion. In their hunger for freedom and innovation, Anna recognises her own desire to be independent and free herself from the stifling straitjacket of her family’s expectations.There are more changes afoot: factory workers are in revolt, the women’s movement is on the rise and the new concert hall is set to breathe new life into the musical scene in the Dutch capital. It seems to be the dawn of a new era, which gives Anna the courage to go her own way in music and in love. But when she is admitted to the Conservatory of Music, she realises her family’s tentacles reach further than she thought. Her father and sister feel that Anna needs to be put in her place and hope that having her admitted to an asylum will bring her back to her senses. In the end her determination to be in charge of her own fate is stronger than life itself.In What Silence Wants, Arthur Japin recounts the tragic story of Anna Witsen (1855-1889), a real-life historical figure whose ambitions and rebellious nature ultimately lead to her downfall – a woman cut from the same cloth as Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and Eline Vere. Her struggle also inspired Frederik van Eeden’s Van de koele meren des doods (The Cool Lakes of Death), a classic of Dutch literature. For Japin, Anna represents all the women who aren’t allowed to be who they want to be.

‘Arthur Japin has written a sublime 19th-century novel, not just in theme, but also in structure, style and even in his choice of words.’

‘A beautiful book. (…) Japin paints a moving portrait of a talented, tormented woman.’

Fiction

Wat stilte wil

After 'Kolya', about the composer Tchaikovsky, and 'Mrs Degas', Arthur Japin once again takes his readers back to the nineteenth century. What Silence Wants is a paean to Anna Witsen, a singer torn between her art and the mores of her time. ‘The story of a woman. How she went in search of her voice, was forced into silence, but in the end made herself heard.’

What Silence Wants

More Arthur Japin

Author

Privacy statement

post@letterenfonds.nl

Arthur Japin

Arthur Japin

Author's website

More Arthur Japin

In Lucia’s Eyes

What Silence Wants