Book

Margriet de Moor

Drowned

An impressive novel, painfully beautiful

Margriet de Moor has proved in her novels and short stories that she can say all she wants with very little. Her sensitive, perceptive, delicate writing and her careful construction carry the reader away slowly but surely and this is more true than ever in her new novel Drowned.

In Margriet de Moor’s universe, living is tantamount to feeling your way, managing, and being preoccupied by things that leave no trace. Shocking events only serve to underline how inevitably an action or lack of action shapes people’s lives, and can, invisibly to others, also unravel them. In face of death, the drowning woman has no thoughts deeper than her regret at no longer being able to try out a recipe for ginger pancakes.

In Drowned, the shock that changes many human lives forever is meteorological: a disastrous flood that the writer bases with documentary precision on the floods that hit the province of Zeeland in 1953. But before the meteorological shock there is a matter of petty human action with great consequences, a dirty trick of fate that causes Lidy to be on the scene of the disaster, instead of her sister Amanda.

Coolly and accurately, De Moor lets fate take its turn, lets the land be flooded, cattle drown, and drowning people in an attic witness a birth. People still converse, but without being able to hear one another over the roar of the wind. De Moor saves the ultimate conversation, the one between the two sisters at the gate to the hereafter, for the end. One sister always wanted to lead her sibling’s life, the other heads agonizingly slowly toward the bottom, surrounded by staring fish. The reader remains behind, trembling.

A technically perfect novel, informative and compelling, exciting and contemplative. de standaard Margriet de Moor knows how to portray magnificently the brute force of nature as well as human resistance to death.

Trouw

Every story is in good hands with De Moor.

Het Parool

Translations

Margriet de Moor

Margriet de Moor (b. 1941) is one of Holland’s most prominent writers. She started her writing career in 1988 with a collection of stories, Op de rug gezien (Seen From Behind). A year later, Dubbelportret (Double Portrait) appeared, three novellas in one volume. De Moor’s highly praised…

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Details

De verdronkene (2005). Fiction, 331 pages.

Sample translation

English (PDF document)

Publisher

Contact

Keizersgracht 205
NL - 1016 DS Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 535 25 35
Fax: +31 20 535 25 49

E-mail:
[email protected]
Website:
http://www.uitgeverijcontact.…

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