Karlijn Stoffels
Karlijn Stoffels (b. 1947) has become one of the most dedicated authors in the Netherlands. Her debut Mosje en Reizele (1996) (which won many awards and has been translated as far afield as Japan) tells the story of Jewish orphans in Poland during the Second World War who manage to keep going with desperate cheerfulness under formidable circumstances. Stoffels is able to convey, convincingly and unsentimentally, the mental resilience of young people. Life is far from easy for the main characters in Stiefland (1997), Khalid (1998) and Rattenvanger (2000). And yet they manage to overcome hardship, and with the required irony and self-mockery, are even able to achieve a degree of inner harmony. She is not afraid to write about serious social problems, as is demonstrated by her well received Stiefland (1997), Marokko aan de plas (2002) and Een-nul voor de autisten (2003). Stoffels’ protagonists often balance on the threshold of childhood and adulthood. But in 2004 she surprised her readers with a happy fairytale for eight-year-olds, Foead en de vliegende badmat. In the romantic and timeless Koningsdochter, zeemanslief (2005), Stoffels definitively demonstrates her great and versatile talent for storytelling.
