Gerbrand Bakker

Gerbrand Bakker (b. 1962) is a novelist, diarist and columnist who broke through in 2006 with Boven is het stil (The Twin), which won three prizes in his native Netherlands and another five abroad, most notably the Dublin Literary Award. It has been translated into 24 languages. In 2013 Bakker also won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (precursor of the International Booker) for The Detour. He then concentrated on non-fiction, but has now released his first novel in more than a decade. He is also a gardener.

Pear Trees Blossom White

(Cossee, 1999, 144 pages)

A family is turned upside down when their mother leaves. Then the youngest son, Gerson, loses his eyesight in an accident, and the balance is disturbed even more. The father feels guilty – he was driving the car and failed to give way.

The Twin

(Cossee, 2006, 264 pages)

Gerbrand Bakker’s Boven is het stil (The Twin) is ostensibly a book about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, but in the end it’s about such universal matters as the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one’s own hands.

June

(Cossee, 2009, 272 pages)

Juni (‘June’), the second novel by Gerbrand Bakker, begins astonishingly enough from the perspective of the former Dutch queen, Juliana, who on 17 June 1969 paid a working visit to the district of Wieringerwaard. Queen Juliana, known for occasionally breaking with protocol, abruptly turns her attention to a woman and child arriving late, by bicycle.

The Detour

(Cossee, 2010, 208 pages)

A Dutch woman, who is a university English lecturer, rents a farm in remote, rural Wales, where she is carrying out research into the work of Emily Dickinson. She intends to demonstrate that some of Dickinson’s poems were not of the same high standard as her other work. When she arrives, there are ten geese living on the farm, but they disappear, one by one. Perhaps it’s the work of a local fox.

Servant, Alone

(De Arbeiderspers, 2020, 287 pages)

After achieving international fame as a novelist with The Twin (International Dublin Literary Award 2010) and The Detour, Gerbrand Bakker made his autobiographical debut with Jasper and His Servant in 2016. Now, the author returns with a mesmerising sequel, building on his fictional oeuvre to present an intimate life become novel. Recording and recollecting everything with a precise pen and wry humour, he searches for answers: Where does his depression spring from? And how can he overcome it?

The Hairdresser’s Son

(Cossee, 2022, 303 pages)

A barber’s quiet life is disturbed by his mother’s volunteer work and by a writer who prods him to consider his past. Why was his father on the plane that crashed before he was born? How can he cope with the feelings the athletic, intellectually disabled Igor arouses in him?

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