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The Song of the Stork and the Dromedary (2022) is a breathtakingly rich novel about love and about literature as a way to triumph over death. The various movies for which she wrote the screenplays have earned a total of 17 international film awards, including the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. The Song of the Stork and the Dromedary is already on its fourth edition.

Anjet Daanje

In early 19th-century Yorkshire, she and her sisters Millicent and Helen lead a reclusive existence marred by poverty and disease. They find fulfilment in their love of reading and writing books. When, after dozens of rejections, the novels by Millicent and Eliza May are finally published (using male pseudonyms), Millicent’s novel becomes a huge success, whereas Eliza May’s novel is labeled ‘sick’ and ‘immoral’. In eleven chapters, each of which could just as well be a standalone novella, Eliza May’s life story is told by people who knew her personally, biographers centuries later, a mysterious notebook and characters whose lives become serendipitously intertwined with Eliza’s.

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Fiction

Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris

This masterful novel spans two centuries in a mosaic of styles and genres. Its central figure is the uncompromising Eliza May, modeled after Emily Brontë.

The Song of the Stork and the Dromedary

With no premeditated plan, he murders a random woman in a random house – a heinous act which gives him a taste for more. Before long he turns into an animal, egged on by the media’s fevered speculation about the identity of this cold-blooded killer. He murders one woman after another – women that look just like his wife, Mireille. People start referring to him as ‘the spotless butcher’.Sliced-off nipples, a casserole topped with fingertips – the ‘spotless butcher’ takes pleasure in the torture he inflicts. He wallows in self-pity and blames everyone else. Once he gets the hang of killing, we start learning more about what drives him. Flashbacks to his troubled childhood and scenes from his home life with Mireille reveal his bad temper as well as his vulnerability. As the story unfolds, the reader begins to understand how things spiralled out of control the way they did – disturbingly, you even find yourself empathising with him in moments, as Daanje really puts you inside his head. It’s this psychological complexity that makes Sugar Animal such an accomplished novel. Jasper is fully in control of himself, his actions and their consequences – at least, that’s what he thinks. When, after his eleventh victim, he kills his own wife, to the outside world he looks like a poor lonely widower. No one wants to believe he is the one who committed all the gruesome murders.Anjet Daanje published this book in 2001, long before she broke through on the international stage with Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris (The Song of Stork and Dromedary) and De herinnerde soldaat (The Remembered Soldier). For fans of these historical novels, Sugar Animal might come as a surprise, since it shows a different side of her as a writer. But attentive readers will pick up on a recurring theme in Daanje’s work: characters that choose to or are forced to put on a mask and act their way through life.Publishing details Suikerbeest (2001, 2023) 168 pages 41,700 words Sample translation availablePublishers Pluim Passage Anton Scheepstra, <a href="mailto:passuit@xs4all.nl">passuit@xs4all.nl</a>Rights Pluim Evi Hoste, <a href="mailto:ehoste@uitgeverijpluim.nl">ehoste@uitgeverijpluim.nl</a>Rights sold De herinnerde soldaat (The Remembered Soldier): Bulgaria (Aquarius), Germany (Matthes &amp; Seitz), France (Gallimard), USA (New Vessel Press). Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris [The Song of Stork and Dromedary]: Czech Republic (Bourdon), Denmark (Gyldendal), France (Gallimard), Germany (Matthes &amp; Seitz), Italy (Neri Pozza), Norway (Bonnier), Spain (Lumen), Sweden (Bonniers).

Sample Translation

For thriller aficionados with a strong stomach, Anjet Daanje’s Sugar Animal is a must-read. 
(...) With this remarkably accomplished book, she is once again a serious contender for the Gouden Strop (‘Golden Noose’) crime fiction award.

The discontent and existential anxiety of the protagonist is the cri de cœur of a desperately lonely, selfish man who feels victimised by the world. Sugar Animal is an intelligent and haunting book.

More Fiction

A glimpse inside the mind of a serial killer

Suikerbeest

In 'Sugar Animal', Anjet Daanje draws a shockingly human portrait of a serial killer. Rutger Jaspers lives in a  rowhouse. He is the sales manager at a sugar factory, he loves his wife, the music of the popular Dutch singer Marco Borsato and having a tidy home. He seems perfectly ordinary.

Sugar Animal

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