Nanne Tepper was born in Hoogezand in 1962. He lives and works in Groningen where, besides writing, he also fronts the peat district’s rock and roll band The Diseases. After contributing a number of stories to literary magazines, Tepper made a highly successful debut with the novel De eeuwige jachtvelden (The Happy Hunting Grounds)
(Contact, 1995, 316 pages)
Nanne Tepper’s first novel received reviews in which he was acclaimed as a daring author who inventively showed which great artists had influenced him: Nabokov, Salinger, Kerouac, Faulkner, Zappa, Mahler. The author wasn’t flattered. ‘References like that are just a joke,’ he explained in an interview soon after. ‘They’re just fooling around. They’re completely irrelevant to the book’s purpose.’ This reaction was yet more proof that Dutch literature had gained a self-assured writer. Even the comment in the interview could have been meant as a joke. The only thing that’s sure is that Tepper can’t be pinned down.
