Rascha Peper

Rascha Peper (1949-2013) made her debut with the collection of short stories, De waterdame (The Water Lady, 1990). She has written numerous novels since, one of which, Rico’s vleugels (Rico’s Wings, 1993), was shortlisted for the AKO Literature Prize. In 1996 she received the Multatuli Prize for her successful book, Russisch blauw (Russian Blue). She is regarded as a writer of carefully crafted books whose construction does not get in the way of a gripping story; readers know her as an accessible and compelling narrator. In 1997 a sizeable volume of her collected short stories was published, and spring 1998 saw the arrival of her novel Een Spaans hondje (A Spanish Dog). In 1999 the novel Dooi (Thaw) appeared, followed in 2003 by the ambitious novel Wie scheep gaat (Embarkation). In 2005 Peper published the novella Verfhuid (Dyed in the Skin).

Exercises in Manliness

(L.J. Veen, 1992, 208 pages)

“… the night’s sleepless hour/ when the decision’s made?” is a quotation from a poem by the respected Dutch poet Ida Gerhardt. Rascha Peper chose this quotation for a novella in which an ‘exercise in manliness’ leads to the main character suffering an unsuspected and possibly fatal blow. Geert M. Bertolet Bokslag is the protagonist whose gruff surname (in Dutch ‘bok’ means billy goat and ‘slag’ blow) leads us to the accurate suspicion that we are dealing with a character of surly disposition.

Russian Blue

(L.J. Veen, 1995, 260 pages)

Unemployed historian Lex Grol (29) has always been fascinated by the fall of the old tsarist regime. In the summer in which this novel is set, he is looking after a villa for friends. Unexpectedly, his former tutor rings him up to ask him to write an article about the murder of the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family. Lex, the son of a Russian mother, has always felt a bond with Alexei, Nicholas’s son and heir who was, like Lex, a haemophiliac.

A Spanish Dog

(L.J. Veen, 1998, 304 pages)

Though her choice of subject is anything but everyday, Rascha Peper writes clear and compelling fiction. Her style turns the unusual into something ordinary, or better still, it incorporates the unusual into the ordinary. In the first part of Een Spaans hondje, we meet the brothers Victor, Jasper, and Felix. Their mother died recently; their father has been dead for a long time. Madness and lunacy are lurking under the surface of what seems at first glance to be a moving family story, and the writer has, characteristically, a number of surprises up her sleeve as the plot unfolds.

Embarkation

(L.J. Veen, 2003, 480 pages)

Since her debut De waterdame (The Water Lady), a collection of short stories, Rascha Peper has steadily published stories, novels and novellas that are strikingly controlled and lucid. Her reputation continues to grow among both the critics and the general reading public. With Embarkation (Wie scheep gaat), a broadly structured novel in which various lifelines intersect, her craftsmanship is definitively proved.

Dyed in the Skin

(Nieuw Amsterdam, 2005, 144 pages)

In an interview, Rascha Peper described her characters as ‘people who are barely able to cope with reality, who hold onto a dream, an obsession, or a fantasy which makes it possible for them to lead their own lives outside of reality.’ In her novels she proves that the consequences of these kinds of passions can be dramatic – and neither do the characters in her new novel, Verfhuid, escape them.

Marzipan Fingers

(Nieuw Amsterdam, 2008, 316 pages)

Passion is the central theme in Rascha Peper’s work. Whether it is the love of German Romantic painting in Verfhuid (Dyed in the Skin, 2005) or the fascination for the Romanovs in Russisch blauw (Russian Blue, 1995), her protagonists are ready to put their life on the line for passion. The same goes for Vingers van marsepein (Marzipan Fingers), about the lifelike specimens by the eighteenth-century Frederik Ruysch, who specialised in preserving people and animals in alcohol.

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