Margriet de Moor

Margriet de Moor (b. 1941) is one of Holland’s most prominent writers. She started her writing career in 1988 with a collection of stories, Op de rug gezien (Seen From Behind). A year later, Dubbelportret (Double Portrait) appeared, three novellas in one volume. De Moor’s highly praised first novel, Eerst grijs dan wit dan blauw (First Grey, Then White, Then Blue, 1990) won her the AKO Literature Prize. Three years later, De virtuoos (The Virtuoso, 1993) was also nominated for this prestigious award. She has since published novels such as Hertog van Egypte (Duke of Egypt, 1996), Kreuzersonate (The Kreutzersonata, 2001), De verdronkene (Drowned, 2005), De kegelwerper (The Juggler, 2006). De schilder en het meisje (The Painter and the Girl, 2010) and Mélodie d’amour (2013). Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

The Virtuoso

(De Bezige Bij, 1993, 272 pages)

In Margriet de Moor’s novels and stories, amorous relationships are usually a source of conflict, as devotion imposes limits on personal freedom. In The Virtuoso (1993), set in Italy in the turbulent mid-eighteenth century, love is a lopsided business.

Duke of Egypt

(Querido, 1996, 288 pages)

Margriet Moor’s has become a literary presence since the national and international success of Eerst grijs dan wit dan blauw. Moreover, the subject of Hertog van Egypte is one whose importance transcends national boundaries. It tells the story of the gypsies, the eternally wandering people, living in caravans ‘through the centre of which run the coordinates of the whole of Europe’.

The Sea Road

(Querido, 1999, 152 pages)

Those who have been dazzled by the beauty of brightly-coloured fields of flowers in full bloom immediately behind the dunes of the Dutch coast, will be familiar with the landscape of Margriet de Moor’s fourth novel. Zee-Binnen opens with: ‘Let’s just call this the story of a road.’

The Kreutzer Sonata

(Contact, 2001, 141 pages)

De Moor has built her latest novel around the Kreutzersonate by the Czech composer, Leos Janácek, who, in turn, based his string quartet on the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy. In Tolstoy’s story, a man and a woman are playing the sonata Ludwig van Beethoven composed for the French violinist and composer, Rudolphe Kreutzer. The two fall in love as they play, which poisons the husband’s mind with jealousy, so that he kills his wife.

Drowned

(Contact, 2005, 331 pages)

Margriet de Moor has proved in her novels and short stories that she can say all she wants with very little. Her sensitive, perceptive, delicate writing and her careful construction carry the reader away slowly but surely and this is more true than ever in her new novel Drowned.

The Painter and the Girl

(De Bezige Bij, 2010, 254 pages)

Margriet de Moor has the rare ability as a writer to touch upon the enigma of our existence, even to make known the unknowable within the ‘bewilderingly ambiguous domain of facts and words’, as she called it in Ik droom dus, her collection of short stories. De Moor does so not by relating realistic or straightforward tales, but through the roundabout route of imaginary lives, sensitively following the intuition of her characters.

Of Birds and People

(De Bezige Bij, 2016, 236 pages)

Margriet de Moor’s stunning new novel is the story of a family in which the perspective flits between members, from a thoughtful father to his three sons, to a woman who loves all three sons and their father, and to Marie Lina, the true love of son Rinus, a wildlife manager at Schiphol, and their little son Olivier

Sleepless Night

(De Bezige Bij, 2016, 240 pages)

Unable to sleep, a woman tries to stem the tide of sorrow at the death of her husband and the years spent trying to fathom the mystery behind his suicide. Can she honestly say she knew him? They seemed to have a sound relationship: a happy, loving marriage. And yet… Why did he take his own life? Was there more to it than she knows? And if so, what could it be?

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