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Helenka — A Pioneer Among Scientists and Freedom Fighters

More Anna van Suchtelen

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Anna van Suchtelen

How did this woman manage to become a scientist? What was her life like? Fifty years after her death, her granddaughter decides to delve into the past and give Helenka the intellectual credit she is long due. Van Suchtelen visits archives, as well as the places of her grandmother’s youth in Eastern Europe. Where necessary, she draws on her imagination, producing a vie romancée about a young woman in a male, scientific environment, during a complicated period in European history.Helenka grew up in what is now Poland and Ukraine (then Russian territory). Inspired by her hero Marie Curie she went to university in Zürich, where she met Dutch student Teddy van Suchtelen. He worked in the soap industry and she was a specialist in the process of making soap powder. They could have been the perfect career couple, but fate intervened. Teddy had to return to the Netherlands to take care of his family, and Helenka fell ill. They moved to Amsterdam, where she died at 36, long before her work could gain any recognition.This book describes the intriguing life story of a woman who fought for her existence and her position as a woman at a tipping point of war and revolution in Europe.<ul><li>A combination of European history, family history and history of science</li><li>An inspirational story about washing powder</li></ul>Sample translation available

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Reads like a gripping novel about the love between two people against the backdrop of the early 20th century. Yet, all of this really happened. Anna van Suchtelen describes it beautifully.

An unusually subtle portrait of her Polish grandmother Helena Drecka, daughter of a sugar magnate in what is now Ukraine. A woman who dreamed of becoming the next Marie Curie. Every page is touching.

Sinan Çankaya

According to Çankaya, he touched on what may be the last Western taboo: the Holocaust and how that suffering has been turned into a political tool. As a writer from a Muslim background, his position was even more thorny. Discomfort around the subject wasn’t just limited to his dealings with the publisher, it also played out in talk shows, at university, and in journalism. And on top of it all, due to his ethnicity, he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to be angry. In the end, Çankaya decided to comply with his editor’s wishes, but in doing so he made use of his own back story to map out his disillusionment with the system.  Çankaya explores the mechanisms that bar him from writing about the Palestinian genocide. He explores the links between anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and World War II, and the colonial roots of Zionism. The crux, as he sees it, is that the suffering of the Holocaust is being turned into a political tool, not out of empathy for Jewish victims but because Western complicity during the war still weighs heavily on the conscience. Echoes of History is an intelligent account of adaptation and integration, code switching and class betrayal. It is about not being able to escape an immigrant legacy and remaining an outsider in the literary and academic worlds. But above all, it about which deaths we remember, and which stories we bury.<ul><li>Bestselling title: 25,000 copies sold</li><li>Hard-hitting topic: what it means for a person of colour to navigate white institutions. Includes a behind-the-scenes account of a fraught editorial process.</li><li>Examines the Jewish memorial culture from an culturally Islamic perspective</li></ul>

Çankaya is known for his sharp, critical contributions to debates around racism, identity and integration.

Sinan Çankaya exposes a history of hypocrisy.

<ul><li>Bestselling title: 25,000 copies sold</li><li>Hard-hitting topic: what it means for a person of colour to navigate white institutions. Includes a behind-the-scenes account of a fraught editorial process.</li><li>Examines the Jewish memorial culture from an culturally Islamic perspective</li></ul>

Book

A thought-provoking essay on who is allowed to speak and who is silenced

Marijke Nagtegaal

Galmende Geschiedenissen

Çankaya’s bestselling book begins with an awkward conversation with his publisher, De Bezige Bij. A successful media figure and university lecturer, he was commissioned to write about transcending his immigrant background. But driven by anger over the genocide in Gaza, he penned an indictment of Western support for Israel instead. This didn’t go down so well.

Echoes of History

Eva Meijer

Mice are highly social animals and have an extensive language, which makes use of sound, posture, gestures and scent. They have habits and even make plans. Meijer was struck by how well they take care of each other, especially when one is sick. This care continues after death. The mice greet and wash the body of their dead friends and bury them under a pile of papers or nesting material. Science, on the other hand, considers mice convenient experiment material: sexually mature at ten weeks and able to birth offspring in just nineteen days.Many scientific articles have been written about lab mice, but they are rarely actually about the mice themselves. They describe what the research teaches us about human diseases, human emotions, human neurology and other human matters. Our propensity for anthropocentric thought places humans at the centre of society, marginalizing other creatures, organisms and things. Meijer argues, however on the basis of her study, that we need to move towards a different political system based on justice and freedom in order to co-exist with human and non-human beings.  <ul><li>By an acclaimed animal rights philosopher who has already been translated into 20 languages</li><li>Winner of the 2025 Nature Book Prize</li><li>Compact at just 160 pages</li><li>Includes charming pictures of the mice taken by the author, illustrations and verses</li></ul>

The Life of Mice describes beautifully the social behaviour of the mice Eva Meijer shared her home with (…) and provides a good introduction to decentring humans in our way of thinking, as well as the philosophy of animal rights. […] A book truly worth reading with the same open mind and curiosity that Meijer has towards the mice.

The Life of Mice is a revelation! Eva Meijer raises serious questions about the animal testing industry.

How living with rescue mice leads to a broader ethical enquiry into animal rights

Stella Rieck

Muizenleven

In 2020, Eva Meijer started adopting laboratory mice from Utrecht University via a rodent rescue project. For three years, the writer took care of twenty-five mice at home while convalescing from Long Covid. Observing the way they clean each other, compulsively tidy up, run in the wheel, make escape attempts, and approach nest-building as a quasi-artform, Meijer came to know them as fully-fledged individuals with their own personalities. Soon Flankie, Bram, Wezel, Bullie and companions were making a deep impact on their human observer.

The Life of Mice

Jacqueline Klooster

Why is this and why is it happening now? And what can we learn from it about antiquity and ourselves? As she explores various mythological characters and their modern transformations, Jacqueline Klooster invites readers to look into an often surprising mirror. Besides reflections on different ways of retelling and the motives of the revisionists, she places the new stories in context, and compares and contrasts them with earlier adaptations and with the originals themselves, revealing her personal fascinations along the way.Helen, Medusa, Antigone, Medea, Persephone are treated, but also male figures such as Achilles and Apollo. Klooster examines works by well-known literary authors like Toni Morrison, Marguerite Yourcenar and Margaret Atwood, but also more popular books (think Fifty Shades of Grey and the Percy Jackson series), Tiktok trends (Medusa tattoos) and films (Barbie, Gone Girl, Troy). ‘Reading is rewriting,’ she claims. ‘Every story potentially contains gaps, questions, perspectives that remain undeveloped, invitations to think, feel and invent further.’ This essential guide decodes why Medusa has become a #MeToo icon and Persephone a romance heroine – and what it means for literature and society.<ul><li>Revisionist retellings of classical myths are a strong trend in books, films/series and musicals. On fan fiction sites like Archive of our own thousands of fan writers lend classical figures new guises and create new plots</li><li>The definitive analysis of one of culture’s hottest trends: why classical myths are being rewritten by and for women, and how these stories reveal our deepest contemporary anxieties about power, identity, and voice.</li><li>A blend of scholarly expertise with accessible, personal writing, for fans of Nathalie Haynes, Stephen Fry and Hadestown.</li></ul>

‘It is truly impressive how many new, predominantly female, often rebellious variations on classical themes Klooster has collected and analyses.’

‘The book is cleverly written and interesting for many since it’s not at all pedantic, while there is something to be learned by everyone. […] After reading Medusa in the Mirror, you’ll have a whole list of novels and classic texts you want to read.’

A scintillating exploration of mythological figures and their modern reinventions

Martijn Prins

Medusa in de spiegel: Wat mythen ons vertellen over wie we zijn

Myths are purportedly timeless; they contain universal meanings, which is one of the reasons they still appeal to us. But the opposite is also true: myths are extremely time-bound. Any storyteller can appropriate them and adapt them for their own purposes. In recent years, there has been a huge turnaround in how mythical figures are presented: popular films and novels about them are everywhere. Feminist retellings, created as a counterculture phenomenon, are so successful that they’ve almost become a cliché.

Medusa in the Mirror: What Myths Tell Us About Who We Are

Maurits de Bruijn

Conscience is a personal account of the interconnected histories of the Palestinian people and his own history as a Jewish Dutchman and descendant of a family torn apart by the Holocaust. The first half of the book explores his own experiences and thoughts about Israel and Zionism, and the second half charts his dangerous journey to Israel and Gaza where he witnesses IDF patrols, terrorism, colonists and expulsions and the lack of human rights afforded to Palestinians. His tears are no help and his grandparents would have been horrified. How can this reality be reconciled with the discourse back home?In this accessibly-written book about one of the most degrading disasters of the 21st century, De Bruijn weaves the different threads into a story that can be read as an appeal to the reader not to hide behind ignorance. He offers no clear-cut solutions but a moral judgement: Israel’s political course is ‘a sacrilegious road that much be condemned and challenged’. It is searing personal reckoning with identity, history, and the cost of silence.<ul><li>Bestselling title: 8,500 copies sold</li><li>A Jewish LGBTQ writer confronts his own moral crisis</li><li>Proceeds from the book are being donated to a Palestine food agency</li><li>Boekenbon Prize longlist</li></ul>

Maurits de Bruijn writes because he has to – out of conscience, out of love, out of responsibility. Beautiful, personal, moving.

'Conscience' is a profound, multifaceted story that stirs up more than just hearts and hateful reactions, about one of the most degrading disasters of the 21st century.

A Jewish writer breaks his personal boycott of Israel to document the reality of Palestine’s occupation

Geweten: Over Israël en Palestina

Part travelogue, part moral memoir, this isn’t just another book explaining the conflict in the Middle East, but the personal quest of an Amsterdammer whose grandparents were murdered in Sobibor. In late 2024, De Bruijn received an invitation from an NGO fighting against the oppression of Palestinians to join a delegation of other activists to observe and write about the occupation on the ground. He hesitated, he’d vowed never to visit Israel again after the events of 7th October 2023. A sense of duty prevails, and he decides to ‘look the beast in the mouth.’

Conscience: On Israel and Palestine

More Non-Fiction

The unlikely true story of a female scientist in early 20th century Europe

Helenka. Pionier tussen wetenschappers en vrijheidsstrijders

When Anna van Suchtelen sees a picture of her grandmother Helena (Helenka) Drecke seated in a laboratory, it piques her curiosity and launches her on a quest. Helenka is wearing a dress, looking defiantly into the camera, and
there is a sign behind her that reads ‘Danger: 4000 volts’.

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