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Manik Sarkar

As a young boy, Rensing grows interested in the question of how to end an animal’s life as skilfully as possible. One day, a bird hits the window of his classroom. Their teacher snaps the bird’s neck to put it out of its misery. The students are shocked – how could he do such a thing? A little later, Rensing says, in what he believes to be a quite normal contribution to the conversation, ‘He should have just smashed its brains in from behind with a little hammer.’ From that moment on he is seen as an outsider. He graduates from his butchery course with top marks and the time has come for his parents to pass on the reins of the family business. He needs a woman by his side to help keep things going, and his parents have someone in mind, Jacomine, whom he ends up asking out on a date. They become involved, though they aren’t in love. Jacomine starts working behind the counter and before long knows the locals better than her fiancé does. Then Rensing finds himself facing two setbacks: his father dies suddenly and the town gets a supermarket. He is the owner of the shop now, but the business is barely breaking even. Rensing believes in the quality of his pricy meat and tries to restructure the business. After taking out a loan he finds himself saddled with a heavy debt, which leads to discord between him and Jacomine. And then a second supermarket opens nearby. ‘For you, there are only two people in this world: you and not-you,’ Jacomine tells him one day, before packing her bags. The times are changing: Rensing begins stocking meat substitutes to cater to flexitarians but he continues to struggle financially, and now he’s on his own. ‘Real loneliness comes from within and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing that can make it any better,’ he reflects. That thought ultimately leads to an act through which he becomes one with his beloved animals.

A brilliant debut about an endearingly ambitious butcher. Sarker’s prose is impressive, and he is a skilled storyteller: building suspense, raising the stakes (cliffhangers!), letting the reader read between the lines and drawing wholly believable characters.

A classic rise-and-fall narrative. Love of animals, bloodlust, craftsmanship, eroticism – in the book’s finest moments, all of these come together.

Book

Debut novel about a butcher’s son devoted to his job and blind to the world around him

Asset

Assets

Marleen Seegers

Ossenkop

In this superbly written debut, we meet a butcher who lives for his craft – he wants to provide the best meat from animals who have had a good life and are slaughtered as humanely as possible. After finishing butchery college, he will be taking over his parents’ business. He has a brilliant future ahead of him.

Oxhead

Forugh Karimi

But then she receives news of a girl who was like a sister to her back in Kabul, and the foundations of the life she’s carefully constructed crumble away. Widá can only see one way out: she has to fulfil an old promise and thus set the past right. Together with Margot, a journalist, she travels to Athens. Will she succeed in finishing that one story and forever laying it to rest?‘There was one story from back then that she’d let go of halfway through. And that trailing end had finally caught up with her. You can’t bury an unfinished story – as a psychiatrist she should have known that.&#039;The Afghan diaspora is compared to a bead necklace that has snapped: ‘The beads bounce all over the place and roll until, haphazardly, they land in some tiny crack and nestle there. Some beads keep on rolling, they never find a place to rest. We’re like that, beads scattered across the whole world, hoping that one day we’ll be strung together again.’In My Eyes I Carry Clouds jumps back and forth between present and past, alternating with diary fragments and letters, told from Widá’s perspective. The power of the storytelling, together with the deeply human narrative, forges a connection that goes beyond a mere understanding of the history of Afghanistan, war and migration.

Forugh Karimi touches the reader deeply with her new novel In My Eyes I Carry Clouds, about the lasting impact of trauma and human resilience.

Literature is a good way to bring Afghan history and the stories of refugees to life. Fiction goes beyond the bare facts, adding emotion, tension and a human perspective.

A journey into the past, to seek closure and move on with life

Clara Rosell

In mijn ogen draag ik wolken

At some point in her life, Widá decided she would no longer allow herself to feel anything, she forced herself to have no emotions. It was a useful survival strategy when she had to flee Kabul as a fifteen-year-old and ended up in the Netherlands. She learnt Dutch, studied medicine and took up a career as a psychiatrist.

In My Eyes I Carry Clouds

Annemieke Dannenberg

Profound and universal issues are explored in this noteworthy poetic coming-of-age debut. The mother-daughter relationship and breaking with the faith one’s been raised in. Judith, who’s preparing for her school-leaving exams, has grown up in a strict religious environment. She lives with her single mother in a flat owned by the church, and the two often ask themselves the question ‘What would Jesus do?’. In their world it’s customary to follow God’s plan, which often channels women into teacher training – but Judith wants to study at the conservatory. A spark is lit in Judith when she ventures  to the local snack bar on a Sunday. There she meets Dorian, a girl with dyed hair and a leather jacket: she is the very opposite of Judith. Judith wrestles with herself in the run-up to the audition at the conservatory: is this what God wants of her? But the question what she herself wants is becoming increasingly important. In the end, Judith is not accepted at the conservatory, yet her resolve to break free grows. The final chord of this sensitive book is both strong and moving. Judith plays a psalm on her cello and decides it’s her last. She takes Dorian’s hand in hers and together they leave the church.

With her debut novel Small Sacred Things, Annemieke Dannenberg has added a new voice to the canon of young authors reckoning with their Protestant upbringing: violence between women and a stifling mother-daughter relationship.

Who determines your path in life? God, your mother or you?

Stella Rieck

Kleine heilige dingen

Small Sacred Things is Annemieke Dannenberg’s first novel. Judith, the main character, is in her final year at school and has to make choices that contradict everything she’s grown up with. Should she do teacher training locally, as is expected of her, or go to the conservatory in Amsterdam, to follow her true vocation?

Small Sacred Things

Hanna Bervoets

The protagonist is Ellie, an isolated, unemployed young woman who tells her story in the form of an apologia. After burning out in her job, she starts successfully investing in the stock market using an app called Matador. She buys shares in an ailing Australian wine company called Royal Estate because the word on the internet is they’re about to be worth a lot of money. Ellie’s goal is to buy 350 grams of gold to bury underneath her house. She’s also preparing for possible catastrophe by stockpiling gas masks and other survival gear.     When her high-school best friend Freya reaches out to ask for help, Ellie introduces her to the world of investing. Ellie feels like she owes it to Freya, who was her savior during their teenage years. Freya then shares this financial knowhow with a group of friends. As stock prices go up and the women get richer, they find themselves coming down with all kinds of ailments. Ellie suffers from panic attacks. She is forced to cash in her investments before the stock collapses. Freya’s friends think Ellie set them up and decide to take revenge – with fatal consequences.      Making Money brilliantly exposes how neoliberalism has transformed our lives and relationships. What starts as Ellie’s attempt to get her own financial situation under control leaves her feverishly grappling with questions of integrity and friendship. This riveting novel deftly weaves together topics like fintech, power dynamics in relationships, and the impact of viral trends. Making Money raises questions that will stick with you long after you put the book down.

Making Money is vintage Hanna Bervoets: chewy, in touch with the zeitgeist, and with a dark edge.

Bervoets  surpasses in this novel in which humankind’s most unpleasant and most vulnerable features are inextricably linked. A propulsive pageturner.

An enthralling novel about money, retribution and sisterhood

Antonia Kasoulidou

Geld verdienen

Hanna Bervoets excels at provocative novels that tackle current issues. She has previously delved into the world of online content moderators, technology and alienation. This time around, she turns her attention to the dark side of modern financial culture. Two friends get caught up in the world of influencers and social media – a venture that strains their finances and ultimately their moral compass.

Making Money

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