(Augustus, 2003, 220 pages)

In November 1910, Professor P. Rijnierse was startled by a telegram from the public prosecutor of A. which contained the following: ‘Come over as soon as possible. Religious mania in R. One victim already dead, situation grave.’ This telegram heads a psychiatric report in which the professor has tried to reconstruct the circumstances of the murder. A man posing as a minister supposedly got a hold over the family of a fanatically religious arable farmer. The minister preached on the farm, was supposedly possessed by the devil, and one evening was gruesomely murdered in the unbearably hot kitchen. ‘Struck down by God’s hand.’

(Augustus, 2006, 239 pages)

In his second novel, Hemelval (Fall from Heaven), Arjan Visser transports the reader to the world of the pigeon fancier. While still a young boy, Lode Bast becomes a fanatical pigeon-lover when he takes care of a wounded pigeon which lands in his garden; in fact it seems he was born ‘with a pigeon in his heart’.

(De Arbeiderspers, 2012, 232 pages)

In his new novel Hotel Linda, Arjan Visser evokes the world of an old man who is reflecting upon the course that his life took long ago, when he was rescued from the Nazis but left a lover behind. The Second World War, the diamond trade and a hotel owner play key roles in this subtle story about memory and the passing of time.