H.M. van den Brink

H.M. van den Brink (b. 1956) is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His novel Over het water (On the Water) brought him fame at home and abroad; the book was translated into fourteen languages and was the winner of the Euregion Prize, having also been nominated for the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Libris Literature Prize and the General Bank Literature Prize. After a seventeen-year wait, 2016 has now seen the publication of Van den Brink’s next novel, Dijk.

On the Water

(Augustus, 1998, 144 pages)

For Anton happiness is concrete, tangible, made of ‘flesh, muscles, sun and wood, water and stones’. His rowing training with his Jewish friend David on the River Amstel, which flows through Amsterdam, also offers him a chance to escape the pressures of his parents’ wishes and his social background. In the long summer of 1939, as the city and the continent anxiously anticipate war, Anton and David live only for rowing and the independence it brings.

Dijk

(Atlas Contact, 2016, 188 pages)

Who decides what’s a metre? How do you establish what a ‘kilo’ really means? How do you prevent people from cheating in science, industry or business? Dijk brings back to life the vanishing world of measuring instruments and standards. What concerns Van den Brink is not that the world has changed, but how it has changed.

Author

H.M. van den Brink

On the Water

Dijk

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