Mathijs Deen was awarded the Halewijn Prize on the final evening of the national Book Week. The prize is awarded annually by the city of Roermond to a literary talent that deserves more attention, and consists of a sum of € 1500 and a bronze statue.
His work gave the jury "a sense of eternity, of beauty, of comfort, that will never leave us. His enormous imagination and extraordinary literary talent takes us down the roads of Europe, as if we were there ourselves."
Mathijs Deen
Mathijs Deen (b. 1962) is a radio journalist and a writer of non-fiction, short stories and novels. In 2013 he published The Frisian Islands, a widely praised poetic history of which more than 25,000 copies have been sold. In 2016, a re-issue of his novel Onder de mensen ('Among the People') was published (of which the German translation Unter den Menschen by Andreas Ecke recently appeared). In February 2018, his travel story collection Over oude wegen. Een reis door de geschiedenis van Europa ('Down Old Roads. A Journey through Europe’s History') appeared. It has been translated into German by Andreas Ecke and published by DuMont. It is currently being translated into Italian by Elisabetta Svaluto Moreolo for Iperborea.
‘Down Old Roads is a terrific book, packed with creative imagination and full of wise reflections.’
— De Morgen
Links
- More about Mathijs Deen and his work in our authors database
