Author

Arjan Visser

Arjan Visser (b. 1961) earned journalistic renown through an interview series which has been running in the Trouw daily newspaper since 1998. Dutch people from different backgrounds, famous and unknown, are asked to respond to the themes of the Ten Commandments, which produces surprising confessions about faith and morals. Visser’s fascination for this material was reflected in his first book, De laatste dagen (The Last Days, 2003), which takes a farming family and describes in tangible terms how their minds are captivated by an itinerant preacher. This book was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize and received the Marten Toonder/Geertjan Lubberhuizen Award as well as the Anton Wachter Prize. Visser has been highly praised for his capacity to balance compassion and irony, a talent he made the most of to portray the vulnerable characters in his second novel, Hemelval (Fall from Heaven, 2006). In 2009 he published Paganinipark, followed by his fourth novel Hotel Linda in 2012.

The Last Days

The Last Days

(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.’

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Fall from Heaven

Fall from Heaven

(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’.

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Hotel Linda

Hotel Linda

(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.

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Website

http://www.arjan-visser.nl/