Books

Directory of Translators

Grants Awarded

Grants

Discover

About the Foundation

Catalogues

Contact

Discover our fiction titles

Fiction

The best non-fiction from the Netherlands

Non-fiction

Recently published Children's Books

Children's Books

Browse through our selections

A complete list of titles in our database

All Books

Books & Authors

Find an accredited literary translator in your language

Searchable bibliography of translations from the Dutch

Translation Database

How to get accredited as a literary translator

Sign Up as a Translator

Translators

All possibilities for financial support

An overview of recently awarded translation grants

Our current residencies for international writers and translators

Residencies

Mission statement and general info

Frequently Asked Questions

Meet the team

Departments and staff

Latest news

What's happening

Get in touch

Our activities and projects

Programs

Discover who we are and what we do

About Us

Göteborg 2027

After her acclaimed debut poetry collection in 2010, she was considered a prodigy by many. Her first novel, The Opposite of a Human Being, published in 2017, was nominated for the ECI Literature Prize. It is an engaged, hybrid book in which essay and poetry are interwoven to highlight the problems of climate change.

The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes

The Opposite of a Person

On Another Planet They Can Save Me

More Lieke Marsman

Author

Authors

Poetry

Non-Fiction

Asset

Assets

Lieke Marsman

But this essay is not just about being ill, it also delves deep into political issues that become personal. The book is a light-foot­ed rally against populism, against facile political assumptions about informal care and about the consequences of being ill.At first, twenty-seven-year-old Lieke Marsman’s shoulder pain was diagnosed as a repetitive strain injury, she was a writer after all. But when the pain finally became unbearable, scans revealed a malignant tumour: a rare form of cartilage cancer not usually found in younger people. Behind her right shoulder blade was a lump the size of a grapefruit. Mars-man went under the knife a week later. Tumour removed, cancer gone, problem solved – except that her existence had been turned upside down. She decided to write down her thoughts and observations in order to give shape to the chaos she was caught up in.Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag provided inspiration. In addition to accounts of their personal experiences, both books provide an analysis of the status of cancer and cancer patients in society, an approach Marsman also adopts.The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes is not merely introspective, it is also a plea to look around and assume one’s social responsibility in a sick society. This essay is about much more than just a young woman struggling with cancer, it addresses the meaning and consequences of illness in our modern neoliberal society.

Quote

Quotes

Ten poems and an essay about cancer, for which Marsman was treated. But it also about so much more: about loneliness, being on benefits, economic sensationalism in culture, and freedom of expression.

A very personal text with a high degree of urgency. Every word strikes home.

Book

De volgende scan duurt vijf minuten

In 'The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes' Lieke Marsman investigates through ten poems and an essay how a sick body relates to a sick world. ‘My little cancer book’ Marsman called it on Twitter.

Privacy statement

post@letterenfonds.nl