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Göteborg 2027

In 1994 he won a Silver Slate Pencil for Robin en Suze (‘Robin And Suze’), in 1995 he won another for Het eiland Klaasje (‘The Isle of Klaasje’). In 2012 he was awarded the Theo Thijssen Prize for his oeuvre. He is, he thinks, a writer who writes mostly about what he thinks, fears, feels, more than about what he himself has experienced. Kuyper writes in a style that is poetic, clear and vivid and enters with ease into the emotional world of young children.

Bizarre

The Dive

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Sjoerd Kuyper

Sjoerd Kuyper makes no bones about it. Humans have brought this flood upon themselves by their greed and destructiveness. ‘They saw nothing, heard nothing, or pretended not to,’ he writes, ‘because they didn’t want to hear or see anything. The sun burned more harshly than ever, but they called it nice weather for a barbecue and everyone became richer and everyone thought they were entitled to everything and everyone flew all over the world.’ Kuyper’s vision of the future may be bleak, but his tone is anything but. He refers to the book as ‘a mischievously playful dystopia’. It’s a fair description: right from the opening scene, the jokes race by at the same pace as the bizarre adventures. Meanwhile, Kuyper speaks through the mouth of Grandpa Leon to vent his dissatisfaction with our current era, covering everything from the decline of democracy to the reading crisis to fake news. When Kuyper’s heroes wash ashore on Atlantis (a hypermodern mountain-based dictatorship, as the story about it being a sunken island turns out to be fake news), the refugee crisis comes up too. The heartless admission policy speaks volumes, as do the starving asylum seekers at the gates of Atlantis. But Moos, Grandpa Leon and their friends are irredeemable optimists, trying with all their might to save the world. Meanwhile, Kuyper’s love of life and all the beauty that is at risk of being lost fills the pages of this book, with beautiful, poetic Kuyper sentences and hope that everything will turn out well, as long as we keep on caring about one another and, above all, believing in the power of stories. In short, this is a book that you need to read.

12+ <ul><li>A thrilling adventure set in the future </li><li>Both hilarious and horrifying </li><li>Lively and poetic use of language </li><li>With an important message </li><li>Memorable protagonists</li></ul>

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Kuyper is angry but, above all, he is a writer. One with an imagination that shoots off in all directions and a stylistically flawless pen.

An ode to the imagination. Unbelievably fantastic and horribly realistic at the same time.

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Fourteen-year-old Moos wakes up to find Leon, his foster grandfather, sailing into his room, complete with his bed. The world has been engulfed by a devastating flood. Fortunately, Moos is prepared: a raft carrying his grandpa’s old Buick and sufficient food and tobacco for Grandpa proves to be a lifesaver, and a frantic adventure ensues, full of social criticism.

The Great Flood

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