The DataCare College in Amsterdam owes its idiotic name to the generous gift from the chief sponsor Jimmy Pretzel, who, apart from being a long-time friend of Daan’s, has made it in the world of IT. Daan seems spineless and weak from the outset, indulging in a joint between classes. But his passion for Hajar turns out to be much deeper than even he expected. As the story unfolds, Daan shakes off his ambivalent attitude and does everything in his power to win Hajar’s love.

Anker takes a tongue-in-cheek look at a contemporary subject. In part, he writes a psycho-realist novel about a teacher who gets caught up in the web of an unattainable love for a seventeen-year old Moroccan student, and this story provides him with the opportunity to look ironically at the world of teaching as well as the artists’ scene of Daan’s old friends. At the same time, as is obvious from the classic opening sentence, Anker is playing a postmodernist game with an all-knowing narrator observing Daan and his good intentions.

In Hajar and Daan, Anker has written an engaging love story and a blunt portrait of our times.