(Meulenhoff Boekerij, 1994, 315 pages)

The autobiographical nature of Adriaan van Dis’s work can be partly deduced from the fact that the surname of the main character in his debut novella, Nathan Sid, is an anagram of his own. Like his character Nathan Sid, Adriaan van Dis had a father who came from the former Dutch East Indies and lived in a house full of repatriated people in the dunes near the Dutch town of Bergen aan Zee.

(Augustus, 2002, 208 pages)

Adriaan van Dis’s Indonesian family background has played a major role in many of his novels, including Indische duinen (My Father’s War), which has been translated into many languages. With Familieziek, he has produced a minor masterpiece that is already being hailed as a ‘classic’ in the Dutch press. As the subtitle ‘a novel in scenes’ indicates, Familieziek consists of short episodes from the life of a family repatriated from Indonesia to the Netherlands.

(Augustus, 2007, 224 pages)

Mr Mulder seems to all appearances to be a upstanding gentleman, gliding through life, impeccably dressed, aloof to the hustle and bustle of the world around him. Because of a sizeable inheritance he can afford to idle away his time, and so he leaves Holland for Paris, where he leads an anonymous, solitary existence. One night he witnesses a dramatic fire in a building occupied by illegal immigrants and transients. People throw themselves out of windows in blind panic, as the crowd below looks on helplessly.

(Augustus, 2010, 224 pages)

After a forty year absence, Mr Mulder – a character from Van Dis’ previous novel, an introvert full of good intentions, none of which seem appreciated – returns to the country that is part of his history: South Africa. In the early seventies, he and his friend Donald were involved in opposing the Apartheid regime. It was a time in which there was room for ideals, for romance. He fell in love with the beautiful activist Catherine, whom he never saw again after she was sent to prison.

(Atlas Contact, 2014, 288 pages)

Adriaan van Dis has explored his family history before but never so unflinchingly as in this memoir. In the final phase of his mother’s life she is at last prepared to talk about living through three wars and the death of her first husband, beheaded in a Japanese internment camp. Adriaan van Dis pieces together her past and his own in a brave and uncompromising book.

(Atlas Contact, 2021, 208 pages)

With its typographic experimentation, Adriaan van Dis’ explosive new novel is surprisingly different from his previous work. It’s not a book about his Indonesian family nor a travelogue, but a searing, sometimes grotesque dystopian novel about the Netherlands today.