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In 2018 he published a collection of travel stories called Down Old Roads: A Journey Through Europe’s History, which was nominated for the Bob den Uyl Prize and received the Halewijn Prize. The Lightship (2020) was longlisted for the Libris Literature Award. His work has been translated into English, German, Italian and Korean. The German translation of The Diver (2023) debuted at number 26 on Der Spiegel’s bestseller list and went into its second print run within the first week.

Mathijs Deen

When the wreck of the Hanne, a small freighter that went down in a south­westerly storm in 1950, is discovered by chance, as well as a million euros worth of copper it is also found to contain the remains of a diver – hands folded, wrists handcuffed and the keys hung just beyond his reach. Inspector Cupido’s investigation leads to a diving club on Terschelling island, a burglary in a house on the German island of Föhr in the Wadden Sea and a family drama in Wilhelms­haven. The closer he comes to the perpetrator, the deeper he finds himself entangled in a confronting case involving fathers and sons who do everything to protect each other. It stirs up memories of his own childhood, blighted by a frequently absent father who worked on a fishing boat and died at sea.Deen once again combines a riveting story with his detailed knowledge of the Wadden Sea, impressing the reader with stunning descriptions of the water and true-to-life characters. Many will have a hard time saying goodbye to Inspector Cupido when they reach the end. Luckily, we know the third book in the series is on its way. Also, Lieuwe Cupido’s adventures are being made into a TV show, a joint production between the Netherlands and Germany.

‘[Mathijs Deen] manages to conjure up the sounds, smells and images of the wind and the waves as you’re reading.’

‘Atmospheric, gripping and pervaded by an underlying sense of threat.’

Book

Fiction

Asset

Assets

De duiker

At the request of his German publisher, Mare, Mathijs Deen – known for his books on the Wadden Sea and the Rhine – wrote his successful thriller 'The Dutchman'. Now there is a second book about Dutch-German border region detective, Inspector Liewe Cupido. Like 'The Dutchman', 'The Diver' is largely set at sea, with divers who loot shipwrecks playing a major role.

The Diver

The Boundless River takes the same approach as Deen’s acclaimed books The Wadden Islands and Down Old Roads, set in the grey zone between fact and fiction, knowledge and imagination. ‘Imagine the river is a character, she’ll need a birth and death as well. Tell me how she was born.’ This is what Deen asks his friend, a geologist, one sunny day in September. The answer that follows is the start of a journey that will carry the reader from a time far before we ever spoke of a European continent to the current day, in which skippers still regard the Rhine as a living being.Deen tells his story as a conversation with his contemporaries, a geologist, a skipper, a primary school teacher, the paleo-geographer Kim Cohen, who tells him that the Rhine does not start in the Alps, but flows together from all parts of Europe, from Italy to the Netherlands, from Saxe-Weimar to France. But the river’s contemporaries also speak, such as the girl from Steinheim, who drowned in the Rhine 300,000 years ago, and Julius Caesar, who saw the river as the border of his empire. We hear of Charlemagne, who tried in vain to connect the river with a canal on the Danube, and the countless generals, from Pichegru to Patton, who had to cross the river. This makes The Boundless River not only a history of one of the most powerful manifestations of European nature, but also a history of the cultures that emerged on the banks of the Rhine.

Mathijs Deen is an exceptional prose stylist.

Deen’s impressive fund of historical knowledge allows him to travel effortlessly through the centuries.

Non-Fiction

De grenzeloze rivier

In 'The Boundless River' Deen does not tell the story of the Rhine directly, from source to sea, but as a current fed by many tributaries. Meandering from the mighty hippos that once grazed on the river’s banks millions of years ago to the exhausted salmon that saw their habitat slowly change, from the girl from ancient Steinheim to the Roman general Corbulo, to the young Goethe and the North Sea fisherman Kommer Tanis – Deen tells stories in which the Rhine is ever present, at times in the lead role, at others as an extra. He shows how, since the beginning of time, the river has connected and divided, terrified, consoled, sustained and engulfed.

The Boundless River

Sergeant Major Geeske Dobbenga heads out on the patrol boat RV180 one last time before it is superseded by a more agile fleet of inflatables. On De Hond, a sandbank in the Wadden Sea, they find the dead body of a man who has likely drowned in an attempt to reach the German island of Borkum by crossing the Wadden Sea on foot during low tide.Since this particular sandbank lies on disputed territory on the Dutch-German border, the police of both countries become involved. Down-to-earth, pragmatic Sergeant Major Dobbenga, and her German colleague Lothar see their bosses butting heads and decide that help from an intermediary is needed to get the investigation off the ground.This marks the start of German inspector Liewe Cupido’s involvement. Cupido, nicknamed The Dutchman by his colleagues, grew up on the Dutch island Texel, the son of a German marine ecologist and a Dutch fisherman.Cupido soon discovers that Klaus Smyrna, the man on the sandbank, did not die of natural causes; the autopsy reveals a blow to the back of his head. Smyrna, Aron Reinhard and Peter Lattewitz made up a well-known threesome of tidal flat hikers. Cupido asks the right questions: why wasn’t Aron part of the expedition? And how come his body was found upstream from the crossing route?Deen shows himself to be an accomplished thriller writer, with convincingly, astutely drawn characters, and with his knowledge of the Wadden Sea, its currents and sands, seamlessly drawn into the story. With Inspector Cupido and the coastal zone near the Wadden Islands, Deen has found his own Kurt Wallander and Skåne. He is already at work on a sequel.

There are so many crime novels out there it’s almost macabre – almost every possible story has been told at this point, but not in every possible way. Mathijs Deen is a writer who has found a way of storytelling wholly his own.

A story about German and Dutch affairs, borders and power. None of that affects the tide – but it does affect the reader.

De Hollander

When his German publisher requested a thriller from Matthijs Deen, already known for his books on the Wadden Sea and the Rhine, he more than rose to the challenge with 'The Dutchman'.

The Dutchman

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