(De Arbeiderspers, 1997, 248 pages)

Writing about one’s inability to write is a favourite among writers suffering from writer’s block – a therapeutic method of release, a way of transforming doom into deliverance. Joost Zwagerman chose it as the subject of his novel Chaos en rumoer.

(De Arbeiderspers, 2002, 213 pages)

Joost Zwagerman’s reputation is based partly on the way he deals with moral dilemmas with which Dutch society is struggling. In De buitenvrouw (The Mistress, 1994), he highlights latent racism, which often degenerates into painful hypocrisy, due to the so-called tolerant national character of the Dutch. In the novel Zes sterren (Six Stars), Zwagerman tackles another delicate subject, suicide. A theme that, as the author explained on television, has an autobiographical background. His father once made an abortive attempt at suicide and later thanked his lucky stars that he had managed to emerge from the depression that had caused his action.

( 2016, 592 pages)

In 2005 Joost Zwagerman gathered the very best short stories by Dutch and Flemish writers in a monumental anthology numbering almost 1,600 pages. Unlike English speaking countries and elsewhere, the Netherlands had never held the short story in very high regard. Zwagerman’s intention was to give ‘literature’s stepchild’ the attention it deserved. The anthology was a runaway success. A year later Zwagerman published another collection of sixty ‘long short stories’, or novellas.