Jaap Robben (b. 1984) is a writer, poet and theatre director. His widely acclaimed novel Birk, published in the UK and the US as You Have Me to Love, won the Dioraphte Prize, the ANV Debut Prize, and was voted Best Book of 2014 by Dutch booksellers. It has since been translated into four languages. Summer Brother (2018) was longlisted for the 2021 International Booker International Prize and is made into a movie.
(De Geus, 2014, 255 pages)
Jaap Robben is well-known as a poet, children’s author and theatre director. This, his first novel, is set on a remote island between Norway and Scotland. Only one family lives there – the nine-year-old Mikael and his father and mother, plus a solitary neighbour. The mail arrives every week by boat. One day fate strikes: Mikael’s father drowns after saving his son from the sea.
(De Geus, 2018, 312 pages)
In Jaap Robben’s debut novel Birk, a boy is manipulated into taking his dead father’s place. Now, in Summer Coat, Brian, the 13-year-old protagonist, also feels the crushing weight of an adult responsibility too much to bear as he is expected to care for his physically and mentally disabled brother Lucien for a whole summer.
(De Geus, 2022, 309 pages)
With A Twilight Life, Jaap Robben creates an unforgettable paean to women who live with a secret grief. 81-year-old Frieda Tendeloo lives in a nursing home and increasingly finds her thoughts returning to the baby she lost in childbirth. A Twilight Life shows how this trauma has left lasting marks in an otherwise long and happy life.
