The Song of the Stork and the Dromedary
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.
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.
Anjet Daanje
Sugar Animal
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.
B. Carrot
A Way Out
Magda is a young teacher at a primary school in Warsaw. She is caring, kind, responsible and has her life in order. But then she gets pregnant. The pregnancy is unwanted, but abortion is illegal in Poland. The subject is so controversial in Poland’s conservative political climate that it’s hard to talk about, even with her friends and family. The only person she is able to confide in is her sister.
Joost de Vries
Higher Powers
It’s the early decades of the 20th century. James Welmoed is too British for his Dutch school – just like he’ll be too Dutch for London later in life. In 1930s Indonesia, he is an inscrutable member of the colonial establishment. No one knows what to make of him – including Elisabeth van Elsenburg, an eighteen-year-old so witty she could only be the brainchild of an author with a keen intellect and boundless dexterity. She’ll grow up to be a writer, but first she embarks on a love affair with Welmoed which, even though it will be cut short, will shape both their lives.
Daan Heerma van Voss
No Goodbye Today
‘Someone is already going to die in this chapter,’ the nameless narrator cautions on the very first page of No Goodbye Today. En route to his holiday destination, Oskar van Bohemen collapses at Schiphol Airport, which turns out to be a place of departure in more ways than one. From there, we follow his three grown children, who each had their own difficult relationship with him and experience his death in very different ways.
