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This page of New Dutch Fiction presents a selection of books recently published in the Netherlands, books that have been included for their artistic and commercial success.

Manik Sarkar

As a young boy, Rensing grows interested in the question of how to end an animal’s life as skilfully as possible. One day, a bird hits the window of his classroom. Their teacher snaps the bird’s neck to put it out of its misery. The students are shocked – how could he do such a thing? A little later, Rensing says, in what he believes to be a quite normal contribution to the conversation, ‘He should have just smashed its brains in from behind with a little hammer.’ From that moment on he is seen as an outsider. He graduates from his butchery course with top marks and the time has come for his parents to pass on the reins of the family business. He needs a woman by his side to help keep things going, and his parents have someone in mind, Jacomine, whom he ends up asking out on a date. They become involved, though they aren’t in love. Jacomine starts working behind the counter and before long knows the locals better than her fiancé does. Then Rensing finds himself facing two setbacks: his father dies suddenly and the town gets a supermarket. He is the owner of the shop now, but the business is barely breaking even. Rensing believes in the quality of his pricy meat and tries to restructure the business. After taking out a loan he finds himself saddled with a heavy debt, which leads to discord between him and Jacomine. And then a second supermarket opens nearby. ‘For you, there are only two people in this world: you and not-you,’ Jacomine tells him one day, before packing her bags. The times are changing: Rensing begins stocking meat substitutes to cater to flexitarians but he continues to struggle financially, and now he’s on his own. ‘Real loneliness comes from within and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing that can make it any better,’ he reflects. That thought ultimately leads to an act through which he becomes one with his beloved animals.Rights 2Seas AgencyMarleen Seegers marleen.seegers@2seasagency.com

A brilliant debut about an endearingly ambitious butcher. Sarker’s prose is impressive, and he is a skilled storyteller: building suspense, raising the stakes (cliffhangers!), letting the reader read between the lines and drawing wholly believable characters.

A classic rise-and-fall narrative. Love of animals, bloodlust, craftsmanship, eroticism – in the book’s finest moments, all of these come together.

Sarkar is an unflinching storyteller. You won’t find a single comma out of place. A book to read and reread, again, and again and again.

Book

Debut novel about a butcher’s son devoted to his job and blind to the world around him

Asset

Assets

Ossenkop

In this superbly written debut, we meet a butcher who lives for his craft – he wants to provide the best meat from animals who have had a good life and are slaughtered as humanely as possible. After finishing butchery college, he will be taking over his parents’ business. He has a brilliant future ahead of him.

Oxhead

Carolina Trujillo

From his prison cell – we know how things turned out from the beginning – he tries to do what Nora has told him to do: draw up instructions for future activists. But instead, he ends up writing his autobiography and a detailed portrait of all the zany characters in the group, reminiscent of Money Heist or Ocean’s Eleven: from Nora, the guns-blazing leader he has a secret crush on, to her boyfriend, the crazy explosives guy, and the femme fatale of the gang.It turns out they each have their own reasons for getting involved. Mol, for example, has long felt like an outsider. As the driver, he is only tangentially involved in the group’s actions at first. He becomes more invested when he realises the appalling conditions animals are forced to endure, and he stops eating meat. The activists’ shared anger about factory farming becomes palpable in the vivid descriptions of the destruction they wreak. Unsettling passages about the conditions in slaughterhouses reveal Trujillo’s depth of knowledge on the subject. More than in her previous novels, which were clearly inspired by the Latin American tradition, The Instructions follows in the footsteps of socially engaged writers like Mark Twain and Multatuli, whose characters are flawed and complex.Mol also quotes Twain: ‘The two most important days in your life are when you’re born and when you find out why,’ only to conclude, ‘You just hope that doesn’t apply to the animals in slaughterhouses.’ The Instructions is the story of an impossible love and the desire to be part of something bigger – but above all, it’s a searing indictment of animal suffering.Rights Cossee International AgencyStella Rieckrieck@cossee.com

Trujillo’s writing is vivid, light-footed, with a surprisingly subtle tenderness and sensitivity that shines through between the lines. Constantly tightroping the line between comedy and tragedy, she shows the ways that people try to protect themselves 
in desperate situations. This is literature at its finest.

A rollercoaster ride that keeps flipping you upside down – but it’s also a manifesto. All this silly violence from a few radical animal rights activists – it’s easy to our shake our heads from the safety and comfort of our armchairs. But Trujillo portrays 
the reality of activism on the ground, which makes this book truly unique.

You go from laughing out loud one moment to squeezing your eyes shut the next because you don’t want to acknowledge the reality of the meat industry.

Hilarious account of the trials and tribulations of a guerrilla-style group of animal rights activists

De instructies

‘You’re not alone, you’re part of something bigger.’ This is Mol talking, a slightly nerdy teacher who finds himself getting involved with a group of radical animal rights activists at the behest of his childhood friend, Nora. The story begins with him trying to clamber out of a ditch in pitch blackness, dressed in a pink pig suit after an arson attack on the biggest slaughterhouse in the Netherlands.

The Instructions

Rinske Bouwman

She looks back on her childhood: climbing volcanoes, riding horses, a little brother she loves to play with, a father who is a ‘cloud-chaser’ with the ability to conjure rain. It’s a world full of magic. The warm animal fur that little Sarlag could sink her hands into contrasts with the frozen products in the grocery store, which she moulds into fantastical shapes before putting them back into the freezers. Why does she live so far away from her family? The reason is revealed halfway through the book: her brother died in a car accident. Her father, who was behind the wheel, refused to speak of what happened and even stopped talking altogether. It’s a universal story: people who are incapable of dealing with their grief and instead run away from it or change who they are completely. Sarlag closes herself off from her surroundings: ‘I want to be alone, but preferably with other people around me.’ But one way or another, grief will find its way to the surface. Her nails become hard and gnarled and long white hair starts growing on her stomach and back – a layer of down that keeps getting thicker. Is this really happening? Slowly but surely, Sarlag begins to change into a yak… She leaves the house and runs all the way out of the city, because as a yak she can’t possibly stay where she isBouwman’s tone is dark and light at the same time. Gripping and moving, this highly original novel about grief and trauma is an ode to the imagination – a wonderful combination of the Dutch down-to-earth mentality and the magic of old Mongolian stories.Rights Shared Stories Hayo Deinumhayo@sharedstories.nl

‘A bold, inventive novel, though the 
writer’s restraint almost obfuscates 
just how daring it is.

It’s impressive how Bouwman builds 
the kind of suspense that makes 
you want to keep reading, both 
through the way she breadcrumbs 
information and through her vivid, 
visceral prose.

A wildly original debut.

A wholly original novel about how grief can alienate and transform us. Bouwman is a keen observer who confidently dissects complex emotions with levity and compassion. A unique debut.

A woman undergoes a magical metamorphosis into a yak in a captivating story about loss and grief

Een soort eelt

Sarlag is a 26-year-old woman working in the 
freezer section of a grocery store somewhere in the 
middle of the Netherlands. She seems completely 
ordinary. With a cool, detached gaze, she observes 
her surroundings and thinks about yaks, those loyal 
animals with their white fur that live on the steppes 
of Mongolia, where she grew up.

Hard Skin

Maurits de Bruijn

When his neighbours try to convince him to call the police, he refuses. As a queer man, David knows what it’s like to be discriminated against and he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to the teens, several of whom are non-white. Instead, he uses them as a source of inspiration for his art. He’s particularly drawn to a boy he dubs Romeo, whose butt reminds him of the peach emoji. Unbeknownst to them, he paints a series of portraits of these macho guys in a range of provocative, homoerotic poses, with the title ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Hood’. When Tom, the curator at his art gallery, puts on a big exhibition of these paintings, David’s work draws a lot of attention. Once the youths learn of the paintings, chaos ensues. To whom does public space belong? Who is allowed to be where, and who is allowed to be what, and on whose terms? As a queer man and as an artist, David is constantly confronted with these questions. He doesn’t want to be reduced to his sexual orientation, and he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed by other people. Like his friend Sophie, who proclaims that gay men make the best friends because they have such a great sense of humour. Or straight curator Tom, who asks David to dress extra feminine to cater to the gaze of the gallery’s clientele. It’s discrimination at its most insidious in a heteronormative world.The novel is written in the form of a long letter from David to Tom. David shares his experiences and his thoughts on taking up space, masculinity, queerness, class, power, hypocrisy, gentrification and art. Maurits de Bruijn is a masterful storyteller. Without coming across as preachy, Man Made is gripping, witty and topical, full of sharp observations and discomfiting eye-openers. Rights Cossee International AgencyStella Rieckrieck@cossee.com

De Bruijn has a fresh, compelling voice. His protagonist’s rather bland world is contrasted with incisive thoughts and opinions – about appropriation, about queerness, about the hypocrisy of the art world and recollections of his art school years.

This book is reminiscent of Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out and Percival Everett’s novel Erasure: satire from a marginalized perspective, all the more confronting because of its mordant wit.

A riveting page-turner. A novel with 
so many layers that readers will find 
themselves constantly wrongfooted.

A clever novel about identity politics that steers clear of predictability.

Whip-smart page-turner about  an artist who is inspired by a group of loitering teens

Man maakt stuk

David is a visual artist who lives in a manicured neighbourhood ‘where the streets smell like diaper cream’. He is neither productive nor successful and has a trivial job in an art gallery. His life changes when a group of rowdy youths start hanging out outside his window every night. David finds himself equal parts annoyed and fascinated.

Man Made

Spring selection 2025

Anne-Gine Goemans

The past and present are inextricably linked in this pacy novel. More than a hundred years before, nearly all the men in the village died in a maritime disaster, including those in Boye’s family. After this catastrophe, the widows and daughters lost their livelihoods and often ended up having to resort to sex work. Boye’s great-great-grandmother, Nanna, received regular visits from the pastor, who would rape her (‘his fingers digging around in her vagina as if he was looking for pocket change’). When Nanna’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Famke, became his maid and was abused too, Nanna took revenge and shoved a hot poker between his legs. Years later, Famke drowned him. The story of these strong women is seamlessly intertwined with the present-day narrative centred on Boye. He desperately wants to get out of the village, but as time goes by he starts to empathise more and more with the people in the community, who are still crippled by poverty and shame about their past. Thanks to Boye, the final vessel from the fleet that was shipwrecked more than a century before is found. This find gives Wondermond an opportunity to process its traumatic past.Anne-Gine Goemans is a brilliant storyteller who excels at having her characters find their inner strength, elegantly moving between the past and the present. Her characters are vividly drawn and her dialogues are witty and natural. Friesland province and the Frisians, the North Sea as a character in its own right, a gripping plot and the author’s lithe prose make Wondermond a wonderful feel-good novel.RightsSusanne Rudloff srudloff@amboanthos.nl

On Gliding Flight: 

A well-balanced, complete novel that stands out because of its range of themes and quirky, eccentric characters whose tragicomic traits are touchingly relatable.

It’s a funny, tenderhearted book reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine – it has a similar cast of lost, confused, and eccentric characters (…) A sweet, sympathetic novel with a sense of humor.

On Honolulu King: This is what literature is all about: 
writing something that stands out. 
Funny and tragic, touching and 
astute. Exceptionally convincing.

Breathtaking novel about the collective trauma of a fishing village and a young man who has to reinvent himself

Wondermond

Boye de Koning (18) and his wealthy parents live a carefree life in an upscale seaside town. Everything changes when his father is arrested for large-scale investment fraud and all their assets are seized. Boye and his mother start over in the village of Wondermond in Friesland, where they move in with Boye’s grandmother in a tumbledown cottage.

Toine Heijmans

The opening chapters vividly describe how closely connected Willem feels to his surroundings: the allis shads in the river, the herd of Konik horses and his beloved dog, Fido. He forages his meals; what he doesn’t eat right away, he stores in a hole under the awning of his tent, an improvised fridge. He has occasional contact with only a few people, including an artist who comes to draw in the floodplains and an eccentric forester who dreams of living in the outdoors. On his birthday, Willem refuses his parents’ offer of a mobile phone. He lives in solitude, not because he hates other people, but because, like Henry David Thoreau in Walden, he is ‘in search of a deliberate life’. But then he finds out that the river is going to be diverted to reduce flood risk – and will be running right through the area he calls home. More and more, the outside world starts to encroach upon Willem’s solitary life. The land is surveyed, and he is taken to a temporary shelter along with the other people living in the area. Forced to seek out a new place to live, he finds himself needing other people’s help and confronting for the first time the frailty of his life off the grid.With this gripping story, inspired by the author’s uncle, Heijmans reflects on the theme of human intervention in nature and the inescapable impact of so-called civilisation on even the most remote places. In the moving dénouement, when the river floods the land, Willem realises he needs the help of others to survive. Like the movie Into the Wild, this novel is about a new way of looking at the notion of freedom and a hermit’s existence: ‘Not bothering anyone is a kind of selfishness too.’Rights Cossee International AgencyStella Rieckrieck@cossee.com

Toine Heijmans, himself a passionate 
moutaineer, tries to recount the inexplicable. 
But to write a novel of this calibre, passion is not 
enough. It takes real skill – and Heijmans’ pen is 
powerful, visceral, breathtaking.

A circular journey through the inner summits 
of life. Calling this a mountaineering story 
would be doing it a disservice. For Heijmans, 
the mountains aren’t a backdrop or an excuse – 
they’re more like a mirror.

A solitary man fights for his existence in the last scrap of unspoiled nature in the Netherlands

Buitendijks

After successful novels about the sea and the mountains, Toine Heijmans takes his readers into the foreshore, the area between the dike and the river. Here, Willem de Waal lives in a tent beneath the shelter of a centuries-old black poplar. He is young and strong and lives in harmony with nature, by the rhythm of the tides and the seasons, far away from the hubbub of modern society.

The Floodplains

Marijke Schermer

The protagonist is Nicola, a microbiologist. As a scientist, she looks at the world through a microscope and keeps herself in the background. That serves her well in her work doing research on bacteria, but real relationships with other people need more than that. A partner wants to know about your feelings; friends want to be supported and support you in turn; children crave a sense of warmth and familiarity. Nicola’s closed-off nature has long been a sticking point in her relationship. But when her girlfriend of seven years breaks up with her, Nicola is stunned. Nicola hasn’t told her that her application for a research grant has been turned down and for her girlfriend, this is the last straw – if you love someone, you share that kind of news with them. Newly single and professionally adrift, Nicola decides to simply observe. She continues her research into bacteria in her own time and tampers with some of the results. She low-key stalks a man named Louis; they end up getting involved, but she doesn’t tell him much about herself. Letting herself into his house before they’ve even had a conversation, falsifying data – she figures it’s alright to cut some corners every now and then.This is what makes the novel so exciting. As a reader, you’re in Nicola’s head, but you soon realise she’s an unreliable narrator. Does she have an accurate view of herself? Should we believe her? In the Eye is a well-crafted psychological thriller. Schermer’s prose often draws comparisons to Rachel Cusk and Zadie Smith, who similarly blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. Gradually Nicola realises she can’t just be an observer. Life demands engagement. Her daughter Marie, a climate activist, demonstrates this when she glues herself to the highway in protest. The novel builds to a powerful dénouement: Nicola finally opens up about her past, making her new relationship a genuine fresh start.RightsCossee International AgencyStella Rieckrieck@cossee.com

Marijke Schermer describes 
emotions in painstaking detail. She 
observes, dissects, plumbs emotional 
and psychological depths – and keeps 
on looking until she’s found the 
perfect words, whittling her prose 
down to taut, spare observations.

In the Eye is that rare thing – a novel you can read and reread while reflecting on your own life and relationships. Cheaper than therapy – and perhaps more effective.

Keen psychological insight in prose that will remain with you for days.

An excellent novel, packed with emotional truth and an elegantly turned narrative.

A scientist is forced to put all her cards on the table in this psychological page-turner

In het oog

Relationships are a careful balancing act: what should you say and what is best kept to yourself? Should you share everything with your partner or is it acceptable to keep some things secret? That is the key question in acclaimed author Marijke Schermer’s riveting fourth novel.

In the Eye

Edgar Cairo

The nameless narrator tells the story of his father Nelis, who is orphaned at a young age and grows up with his aunt in violent, impoverished surroundings. He nonetheless manages to build a life for himself and start his own family. He is particularly devoted to his son – he’ll do anything to look out for him and make sure his every need is met. But once his son is grown, that devotion gives way to a mysterious distance. The leitmotif in the story is urban and rural life in Suriname. He paints a picture of a life of hard work and passionate play, from sexual flings to magic and superstition. Cairo weaves this riotous story from a series of episodes, rooted in the tradition of oral storytelling. The impact of the plantations continues to reverberate through everyday life – people are desperately impoverished and weighed down by a feeling they should ‘know their place’. We also see this reflected in the father’s attitude. He’s a hard worker, conscientious, sees it as his job to keep a roof over his family’s heads and put food on the table, but at the same time he lacks confidence, self-respect and increasingly ignores his own needs. Over time, he comes to understand that he does love his son, but that, because of his background, he doesn’t have enough left over for himself. Decades later, his son is desperately trying to understand why his father turned his back on him.Rights Stella Rieckrieck@cossee.com

&#039;As I grow older he grows away from me, I from him. To him, I have become like a matchstick that you throw away after use. Done, out! Like a chest, a suitcase that our elders fill in their rituals to say goodbye to the spirits of doom and then dispose of, hide, deep in the forest, so that they might be eternally cured of the burden that torments their lives. Oh, it seems as if, his whole life, again and again, the Black man has to say goodbye to the past, as if his own life were unworthy of him – always a farewell ritual.&#039;Translation Kirsten Gehrman

Cairo considers Suriname’s history of slavery to be central to the country’s present. This theme – the postcolonial trauma of 
slavery – makes this book extremely topical (…) A fascinating revelation.

Being betwixt-and-between is a great topic for a novel, but few authors are able to convey this as powerfully as Edward Cairo in this book.

Classic

Love and distance between a father and son in colonial Suriname in the  ’50s and ’60s

Kopzorg. Het verhaal van vader en zoon

‘Trees that don’t grow in step with the forest become isolated, wither, die.’ This line is emblematic of the novel Temekoe (1979) by the Surinamese author Edgar Cairo, which has recently been republished. It tells the story of a complex father-son relationship, while at the same time painting a portrait of a society after the abolition of slavery, which continues to leave profound psychological wounds.

Temekoe

Mathijs Deen

Like other legendary fictional detectives, Liewe Cupido is a man of few words. It’s not just about keeping his cards close to his chest – he’d rather keep quiet about painful things, even to himself. That has everything to do with the skeletons from his own closet, especially his father’s mysterious death by drowning when Cupido was a teenager, which left him bereft and adrift – and which he still feels a sense of guilt about. The Rescuer is about a cold case: a body is found off the coast of Britain, a tugboat captain who went missing twenty years earlier after a shipwreck that drew both German and Dutch rescue services. At the time, neither were able to bring him home. The ingredients of the story are vintage Deen: the legal no man’s land of the Wadden Islands (Cupido is with the German police, yet grew up on the Dutch island of Texel) and the stunning descriptions of this harsh, stormy landscape, which make the reader yearn to be out there, at the mercy of the elements. Deen reveals how this decades-old murder turns people’s lives upside down – especially within the community of gruff rescue workers on the German island of Norderney. Cupido is assisted by young detective Xander Rimbach, who combines a disarming insecurity with a remarkable intuition.The Rescuer is a story about pride, poison, grief, parenthood and faith. The mounting suspense reaches fever pitch when Michael Waagmann appears on the scene, an old rescue worker who turns out to be extremely manipulative. The book culminates in a gripping finale that shakes even the unflappable Cupido to his core.RightsMare VerlagSchultze-Kossack AgencyOn behalf of Mare VerlagAnnette Wolfannette.wolf@mp-litagency.com

As usual, Deen’s narrative voice is assured and wide-ranging, deftly alternating perspectives without being overly fixated on his detective protagonist, with a keen sense of the idiosyncrasies of the Frisian world between Texel and Flensburg.

A lot of crime fiction also makes some kind of statement about the society in which the crimes are being committed. But few authors manage to be as subtle and non-didactic about it as Mathijs Deen in this book.

A unique contribution to the Dutch thriller genre – one made by a journalist who never would have ventured into writing crime fiction if it hadn’t been for his German publisher twisting his arm.

What secrets do the heroes of the sea carry with them?

De Redder

In Deen’s sublime third Wadden Sea thriller, a mystery unfolds against a spectacular backdrop. The psychological depth and literary brilliance of Deen’s works are reminiscent of the great Scandinavian authors in the genre. longside the murder case – below the surface of the water, if you will – he constructs a riveting psychological drama.

The Rescuer

Erik de Graaf

Despite differences in size and placement, all shapes and colours are equally important in Mondrian’s paintings, as he believed should be the case with people in real life. Graphic novelist Erik de Graaf’s fascination with this philosophy led him to investigate what moved this iconic Dutch artist, in art and in life. Through in-depth online and offline research, travel and interviews, De Graaf has pieced together this sensitive reconstruction of Mondrian’s last eleven years. As a narrative artist, De Graaf seeks to create stories that move people. He searches for the great in the small, the extraordinary in the ordinary. The main story is interwoven with portraits of Mondrian’s friends and colleagues, like Peggy Guggenheim and Harry Holtzman, who share their views of the artist. Between 1933 and 1944, Mondrian lived in Paris, London and New York, moving as far away as possible from the impending doom of WWII. De Graaf takes the reader back into those years. His drawings of the architecture of these cities are so beautifully vivid, readers will feel as though they are there. The episodes in Nazi Germany are drawn in greyscale contrasting with Mondrian’s colourful pictures as tries to find a sense of harmony in his painting. De Graaf’s crisp, clean style is influenced by the artists he deeply admires: Yves Chaland, Joost Swarte, Seth and Chris Ware. He brilliantly conveys Mondrian’s attempts to bring light into an ever-darkening world.RightsChris Mokkenchris.mokken@scratchbooks.nl<h3>On Shards/Scars: </h3>

Erik de Graaf’s diptych deserves a place in the canon alongside Maus, The Beast is Dead, Alan’s War, and the graphic novel version of Anne Frank’s Diary...

Heart-wrenching storylines and deftly wrought flashbacks…

An impressive testimony.

Graphic novel

Graphic novel about the key period in Mondrian’s life in which he perfected his art

Mondriaan: Een betere wereld

The world-renowned painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) believed it was an artist’s duty to strive for harmony and equilibrium in art, in order that it could serve as a blueprint for human society. His way to achieve this was to strip his work of all noise and distraction and use only universal shapes and primary colours.

Mondrian: A Better World

Our aim is to showcase the best fiction from the Netherlands. Most titles will have been published recently and will have done very well in terms of reviews, sales and awards or nominations. Dutch Fiction is distributed to international editors and publishers. We highly recommend the titles on this page, and would be happy to give further advice on noteworthy and interesting books for your publishing list. For more information please contact our fiction specialists.

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