In The Independent blogger Ann Morgan recommends Cees Nooteboom’s Rituals as one of the ten foreign books we should all read.

Mikis and the Donkey by Dutch author Bibi Dumon Tak and illustrator Philip Hopman and translated by Laura Watkinson is the winner of the 2015 Mitchelder L. Batcheler Award. Dumon Tak, Hopman and Watkinson have the pleasure of receiving this prize - given to the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States - for the second time. Soldier Bear, published in Dutch as Soldaat Wojtek, won the 2012 Batchelder Award.

From January the 19th until the 23rd 10 German fiction publishers visited the Netherlands and Flanders for an extensive tour through the literature landscape of the Low Countries. During this tour the German publishers presented their publishing houses.

Last Thursday, author Maartje Wortel won the BNG Bank Literature prize. She receives the oeuvre award for young talent for her novel IJstijd.

Journalist and author Geert Mak is the recipient of the 2015 Gouden Ganzenveer (golden feather quill). The Academy honours Mak for his extraordinary engagement in both national and international history. The award will be presented to Mak on the 16th of April in Amsterdam.

Maartje Wortel will stay as a writer in residence at the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht for a period of two months. The writer in residence programme is a joint initiative of the Dutch Foundation of Literature and the Van Eyck Academy.

The Belgian translation prize ‘Prix Scam de la Traduction littéraire’ has been awarded to Marie Hooghe for her translations from Dutch to French.

Die Jury des Else Otten Übersetzerpreises hat beschlossen, den Preis 2014 zwei Übersetzern zu verleihen: Bettina Bach für ihre Übersetzung von Hotel Linda von Arjan Visser, im Februar 2014 unter dem Titel Der blaue Vogel kehrt zurück erschienen bei Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag in München, und Rainer Kersten für seine Übersetzung von De laatkomer von Dimitri Verhulst, im April 2014 erschienen als Der Bibliothekar, der lieber dement war als zu Hause bei seiner Frau bei Luchterhand Verlag in München.

The P.C. Hooft Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for literature in the Netherlands is awarded to poet Anneke Brassinga (1948), whose work has been supported by by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and has been translated in more than ten languages including German and French. The annual award is alternately given for prose (fiction), essays (non-fiction) and poetry and will be presented to Brassinga on Thursday May 21th 2015 for her body of poetry.

On the 4th of December The Independent published an overview of the best debuts of 2014. Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda was one of the novels on Eimear McBride’s list: “If I had to choose one first novel, it would be the addictive bedlam of Bonita Avenue by Dutch novelist Peter Buwalda (Pushkin, £12.99).”

Joost de Wit has passed away at the age of seventy-five in his home village of Muntendam. De Wit (1938-2014) was director of the Foundation for the Promotion of the Translation of Dutch Literary Works, the forerunner of the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch literature (NLPVF).

This morning at the Frankfurt Book Fair Marente de Moor was announced the winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2014 for her second novel The Dutch Maiden (De Nederlandse maagd), published by Querido.

The two most important Dutch prizes for children’s and young adult literature, the Golden Slate Pencil and the Golden Paintbrush have gone to one and the same book, for the first time since 1985: The Mystery of Life – and the Stinky Socks of Jos Grootjes from Driel, published by Gottmer. Author Jan Paul Schutten and illustrator Floor Rieder introduce earth’s origins, the universe and the story of evolution in ways that are witty and factual, technical and anecdotal.

Poet Gerrit Kouwenaar died on 4 September 2014 in his hometown of Amsterdam. He was 91 years old. Kouwenaar was one of the most important Dutch poets and a member of the Vijftigers, a group of 1950s experimental Dutch poets, who changed Dutch poetry forever.

The Jenny Smelik-IBBY prize 2014 goes to author Hans Hagen and illustrator Philip Hopman for their youth novel Het hanengevecht (The Cockfight), published by Querido. This title was also selected for the 10 Children’s Books From Holland brochure (spring 2013) from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Previous work by Hans Hagen has been translated into fourteen languages, including German, English, French, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese and Papiamento.

The renowned Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk is the Grand Prix winner of the 2014 Helena Vaz da Silva European Award for Raising Public Awareness on Cultural Heritage. This Award acknowledges exceptional contributions to the communication on cultural heritage and European ideals. The Jury also gave a Special Award to the Portuguese Art Historian José-Augusto França and a Special Mention to Pieter Steinz.

Flemish author Bart Moeyaert has been appointed artistic director of the programme to be presented by Flanders and the Netherlands as guests of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2016.

The shortlist for the European Literature Prize 2014 has just been announced at a festive gathering in Amsterdam. The jury selected five titles from a longlist of twenty translated novels. The European Literature Prize is unusual in recognizing both the author and the translator of the winning book. The prize will be presented on Sunday 7 September, during Manuscripta, in Utrecht.

The prestigious Libris Literature Prize 2014 has been awarded to Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer for his novel La Superba (De Arbeiderspers). The jury described it as “an important novel with a powerful universal message which deserves many new readers outside our own language”.

Words without Borders dedicates a special issue of its webmagazine to New Dutch and Flemish Writing, under the title ‘Taboos’. This issue presents short prose exploring the intrusion of the forbidden, the illegal, the unspoken into people’s lives and homes. Editors Sanneke van Hassel (writer) and Victor Schiferli (Dutch Foundation for Literature) selected work from fourteen authors, most of whom grew up in the prosperous years that the Netherlands enjoyed from the mid-1970s until the 2008 financial crisis.

Der VvL-penning 2014 geht an die Übersetzerin Andrea Kluitmann und würdigt ihr großes Engagement für das Übersetzerfach. Andrea Kluitmann setzt sich schon seit vielen Jahren für die Literatur und ihre Übersetzung in den Niederlanden ein. Als Mitglied im Beratungsgremium des Nederlands Letterenfonds in Amsterdam sowie des Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen in Utrecht, als Mitbegründerin der Website Vertaalverhaal.nl, und nicht zuletzt als Mitorganisatorin der ‘Übersetzerglücktournee’ (Vertalersgeluktournee).

The English translations of Tirza by Arnon Grunberg (tr. Sam Garrett for Open Letter Books) and The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (orig. Het verboden rijk, tr. Paul Vincent for Pushkin) have reached the finals of the 2014 Best Translated Book Awards in Fiction.

As of 1 April 2014, the Dutch Foundation for Literature’s board of directors will become a supervisory board. On that same date, Tiziano Perez will take up the post of managing director.

On Monday 17 March, the Dutch and Flemish Ministers of Culture, Jet Bussemaker and Joke Schauvliege, signed an agreement with Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurter Buchmesse. That makes it official: the Netherlands and Flanders will jointly present themselves as guests of honour at the publishing industry’s most important international book fair in 2016. The Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund will assume responsibility for the practical organization of the guest-of-honour programme. They will receive a significant part of the necessary funding from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Flemish Ministry of Culture, Youth, Sport and Media.

On Monday February 10, the Prix des Phares du Nord 2013 is given to Alain van Crugten for his translation into French of Sprakeloos by Tom Lanoye (La Langue de ma mère), published at the Parisian La Différence. The jury praised as well his French translation of the theatre play Mamma Medea.

The Vondel Translation Prize 2013 has been awarded to David Colmer for The Misfortunates (Portobello Books), his translation of De helaasheid der dingen by Dimitri Verhulst. The award ceremony took place at Europe House in London on Wednesday 12 February 2014.

Mister Orange is the 2014 Batchelder Award winner. Originally published in Dutch in 2011, the book was written by Truus Matti, translated by Laura Watkinson, and published by Enchanted Lion Books. Another translation from Dutch by Watkinson, The War Within These Walls (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers), written by Aline Sax and illustrated by Caryl Strzelecki, was selected as one of three Honour Books. The Batchelder Award is given to the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States.

The longlist for the European Literature Prize 2014 has been announced: twenty novels translated into Dutch from no fewer than twelve different languages. A jury of Dutch and Flemish quality bookshops was asked to choose the best European novels in Dutch translation published in the past year. The prize is worth €10,000 to the author of the winning book and €5,000 to the translator.

Eighteen Dutch and Flemish novels have been selected for the longlist of the Libris Literature Prize 2014: the biggest Dutch literary award next to the AKO Literature Prize, modeled after the famous Booker Prize. The annual Libris prize for the best Dutch novel of the previous year consists of € 50.000.

Maria Barnas, F. van Dixhoorn, Micha Hamel, Miriam Van hee and Antoine de Kom have been nominated for the VSB Poetry Prize 2014, the annual prize for best Dutch work of poetry that will be awarded on January 29.

This year’s Translation Prize of the Dutch Foundation for Literature will be awarded to Martin de Haan, literary translator from French to Dutch. The Prize, in recognition of his entire body of work as a translator will be awarded on Friday 13 December in Amsterdam.

With the French translation of his novel Op zee (At Sea), Toine Heijmans has won the prestigious French literary prize ‘Prix Médicis étranger’. Heijmans is the first Dutch author ever to win the annual award, surpassing amongst others Alan Hollinghurst, Jaume Cabré and Javier Marías.

The Vondel Translation Prize 2013 has been awarded to David Colmer for The Misfortunates, his translation into English of De helaasheid der dingen by Dimitri Verhulst. The jury was made up of British critic Paul Binding (Times Literary Supplement) and translators Sam Garrett and Paul Vincent.

The English Schwob website is being launched today as part of an ambitious project to find and promote insiders’ tips about modern European literature. Schwob presents modern classics, cult books and must-reads from that have not yet been widely translated, at http://schwob-books.eu.

IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, has selected Ellen van Velzen’s debut novel Jonge vlieger (Young Kite Flyer), Fjouwer dappere mûskes (Four Brave Mice) by Frisian author Eppie Dam and Nul is een raar getal (Zero is a Peculiar Number) by illustrator Henriette Boerendans for the Honour List 2014. The Honour List offers a selection of quality children’s literature from more than seventy affiliated countries and will be presented at conferences and book fairs around the world.

From the end of August, the director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, Pieter Steinz, will delegate some of his tasks to his deputy Tiziano Perez.

The European Literature Prize 2013 goes to Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère, translated by Katelijne De Vuyst and Katrien Vandenberghe. Chairman of the jury Alexander Rinnooy Kan will present the prize to Carrère and his translators in Amsterdam on Saturday 31 August, during Manuscripta

The shortlist for the European Literature Prize 2013 has been announced during a festive evening at SPUI25 in Amsterdam. From a longlist of 21 translated titles, the jury has selected five from which the winner will be chosen. The prize will be awarded on 31 August, during the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam.

The first German James Krüss Prize for children’s and young adult literature will be awarded to the writer and illustrator Joke van Leeuwen. She will receive the award for her entire oeuvre, together with two German translators of her work, Hanni Ehlers and Mirjam Pressler.

Tommy Wieringa has won the prestigious Libris Literature Prize 2013 for his novel These Are the Names (De Bezige Bij). This book is highlighted in our Spring 2013-publication, 10 Books from Holland, and was partially written by Wieringa, on invitation of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, as a writer in residence at the NIAS in Wassenaar.

Oek de Jong has been awarded the Golden Owl Prize 2013, which is the most important literary prize in Flanders. The prize consists of 25,000 euros and a work of art by Philip Aguirre. A panel of experts named De Jong’s novel Pier and Ocean (Atlas Contact publishers) the best Dutch literary work of the past year.

Caesarion by Tommy Wieringa is one of the ten books contending for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2013. Thanks to his shortlisted novel, Wieringa finds himself in the company of Michel Houellebecq (The Map and the Territory) and Haruki Murakami (1Q84).

The European Union announced today that a subsidy of €200,000, the maximum, has been granted to the Schwob.nl project to enable it to expand into an international network, a European portal for the best unknown books of world literature.

Ester Naomi Perquin‘s third poetry collection titled Cell Inspections (Celinspecties) has been awarded the VSB Poetry Prize, Holland’s most prestigious prize for poetry, worth 25,000 euros. The other nominees were H.H. ter Balkt, Luuk Gruwez, Sybren Polet and Menno Wigman.

Gods Without Men, Limonov and Stone Upon Stone are among the titles on the longlist for the European Literature Prize 2013, that was just announced. Thirteen independent Dutch and Flemish bookshops have selected the twenty-one best European novels published in Dutch translation last year. The prize will be presented in early September, during Manuscripta 2013, the opening event of the Dutch book season.

At the last Frankfurt Book Fair, the Dutch Foundation for Literature presented a Dutch Classics brochure. One of the many titles in it was Oeroeg by Hella S. Haasse. Even though it was written in 1948, it is still considered one of the highlights of her literary career. This fall, Portobello Books published a new translation by Ina Rilke, The Black Lake, a reference to the black lake in which Oeroeg’s father drowns.

The day the 2012 AKO Literature Prize was presented, its first winner died. Bernlef was awarded the AKO Prize in 1987 for Public Secret. Best known as the author of Out of Mind (1984), which was published in twenty languages, he served on the board of the Literature Foundation from 1968 to 1970. He was also a poet whose twenty collections won him the P.C. Hooft Prize in 1994 and the translator of many novels and poems from Swedish and French.

After thorough deliberation the jury has unanimously awarded the Else Otten Übersetzerpreis 2012 to Christiane Kuby for her translation of Godenslaap by Erwin Mortier. The German translation Götterschlaf appeared in 2010 by publishers DuMont in Cologne.

Six authors have been nominated for the AKO Literatuurprijs 2012. From all the Dutch novels published over the last twelve months, the following titles have been selected: Grip (Grip) by Stephan Enter, Liefde heeft geen hersens (Love has no Brains) by Mensje van Keulen, Dinsdag (Tuesday) by Elvis Peeters, Post Mortem by Peter Terrin, Het boek Ont (Man & Post) by Anton Valens and De man zonder ziekte (The Man without Illness) by Arnon Grunberg.

Joke van Leeuwen writes poetry and prose, which she illustrates herself, for both adults and children. Her work includes dozens of titles, for which she has now been awarded the Constantijn Huygensprijs. ‘Whether she writes or draws, for adults or for children,’ the jury writes, ‘her very personal style makes her work always instantly recognisable as that of Joke van Leeuwen.’

Erik Menkveld has won the Academica Literatuurprijs 2012 for his novel Het grote zwijgen (The Great Silence). The jury described the novel as a wide-ranging and cinematic narrative: “Het grote zwijgen tells the story of a tragic friendship that is rooted in admiration and lofty ideals, but which founders on the banal and merciless reality of war, adultery and betrayal. Above all of that reigns the great, indifferent silence of the firmament.”

Following years of effort by translator Gerd Busse, the first volume of Het Bureau has recently been published in German by C.H. Beck. This event has not gone unnoticed. The first discussions of the book have already appeared in Germany, and it seems to have been well received not only by the media, but also by readers.

Writer Willem G. van Maanen passed away last Friday at the age of ninety-one, his publisher De Bezige Bij announced today. Van Maanen (1920-2012) was the author of a varied and highly respected body of work in which music, theatre, fine art and architecture played an important part. In 2004 he was awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his work as a whole.

Poet, writer and translator Francisco Carrasquer Launed, winner of last year’s Brockway Prize for poetry translators, passed away on 7 August in the Spanish town of Tárrega.

The Institut Néerlandais in Paris kindly requested us to bring to your attention the writers residence Villa Marguerite Yourcenar in the North of France. The residence offers accommodation to authors from all over Europe for a period of one or two months during which they can work on their manuscript. Applications for 2014 are now welcome and can be submitted by writers of all literary genres: novel, poetry, theatre, essay, comics, young adult and children’s literature. In order to apply one must have published at least one book with a European publishing house.

Gerbrand Bakker has won the Premi Llibreter 2012 for his debut novel Boven is het stil (2006), which was published this year by the new publishing house Rayo Verde in Barcelona, both in Spanish (translated by Julio Grande as Todo está tranquilo arriba) and in Catalan (translated by Maria Rossich Andreu as A dalt tot està tranquil).

Since yesterday, the German edition of Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter) by Jan Terlouw has been available in German bookshops. It has been translated by Eva Schweikart. Terlouw’s novel has been published by Verlag Urachhaus, a firm that has published 109 Dutch children’s books in German over the years. That is a record number of translations from the Dutch for any publisher.

Alsof het voorbij is, the Dutch translation of the novel Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes has been selected as the winner of the European Literature Prize. The novel was published by Atlas Contact and translated from English by Ronald Vlek.

The novel Alsof het voorbij is (published by Atlas Contact) by Julian Barnes, translated from English by Ronald Vlek, has been selected as the winner of the European Literature Prize. The prize goes to both the author and the translator of the best European novel to appear in Dutch translation in 2011. The author will receive the sum of € 10,000, the translator € 2,500. The prize will be presented on Saturday 1 September during Manuscripta in Amsterdam.

For La cena, the Spanish translation of Het diner, Herman Koch has been awarded the Premio Novela Europea Casino de Santiago prize. Koch will receive the prize in November during a gala dinner in the casino of the Galician city. Former prize-winners include Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Sandro Veronesi and Kazuo Ishiguro. Through the awards, the prize also seeks to contribute to the European concept.

Amsterdam Stories by Nescio, translated by Damion Searls and published by NYRB Classics, is reviewed in The Guardian. The author Nicholas Lezard compares Nescio to his near-contemporary Robert Walser: “He found little time for writing, and wrote little: but what he wrote came out of the love of it, or the urgency to express something. And that something is, very often, about the grand scheme of things, and our insignificance within it – which would in itself not be the most earth-shattering of news, were it not for the fact that there is still something rather wonderful, something holy, about this insignificance.”

The shortlist for the European Literature Prize 2012 has been announced. Out of a longlist of twenty translated titles the jury has selected five from which the winner will be chosen. The prize will be presented in early September, during Manuscripta 2012.

Writer A.F.Th van der Heijden has won this year’s € 50,000 Libris literature prize for his novel Tonio, based on the death of his son in 2010. The book, which has sold over 100,000 copies, was regarded as the favourite for the prize.

The Dioraphte Prizes for Youth Literature have been awarded by the jury to Anne-Gine Goemans (in the Dutch-language category) and Paul Murray (in the foreign-language category); Dutch writer Arjen Lubach received the prize awarded by the public. The prize money for each award consists of 15,000 euro.

With a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other, Doeschka Meijsing was a well-known figure in the Amsterdam literary world. Her aim in life was to write ‘as if every morning is sparkling new and the remains of last night’s party need to be swept together in language,’ as she puts it in her novel 100% chemie (100% Chemistry). The last thing she wanted was to make things easy for herself. She wrung life out until it hurt.

The AKO Literature Prize 2011 has been awarded to Marente de Moor for her novel De Nederlandse maagd (‘The Dutch Maiden’). Other nominees this year were: Jeroen Brouwers (Bittere bloemen, Atlas), Peter Buwalda (Bonita Avenue, De Bezige Bij), Arnon Grunberg (Huid en Haar, Nijgh & Van Ditmar), Marja Pruis (Kus me, straf me, Nijgh & Van Ditmar) and P.F. Thomése (De weldoener, Contact).