Jeroen Thijssen (b. 1959) is the author of A Trip Around Gaul (2010) and the short-story collections The Marshall and Other Stories (1998) and The Children of the Triple A (2009). After Brother (2007), Solitude (2014) is his second novel. Taste, a book about food and flavour, will be published in the spring.
(Nieuw Amsterdam, 2014, 464 pages)
Frank and Robert Bramme live in a squat. The brothers grew up at their grandfather’s house after their parents died young. The grandfather has dementia and has been admitted to a nursing home. Managing his affairs and having no money themselves, the brothers find themselves forced to give up the old house. While clearing it out they discover a collection of cardboard boxes in the attic. This is the starting point of a suspenseful story that takes the reader back to Indonesia in the 19th century, where the brothers’ ancestors ran a family plantation. With this rich and atmospheric novel, Jeroen Thijssen follows in the footsteps of Multatuli and Hella S. Haasse.
