Starring in the ninth episode of Kopje Koffie, the German book podcast about Dutch literature: Flemish writer Lize Spit talks to Katharina Borchardt and Bettina Baltschev about her book Ik ben er niet (I’m not there), published by Das Mag in 2020. In July of 2022, the book was published in German by S. Fischer, under the title Ich bin nicht da, translated by Helga van Beuningen.

The Dutch Foundation for Literature, Flanders Literature, the Dutch Embassy in Berlin and the Diplomatic Representation of Flanders are launching the new podcast Kopje Koffie (Cup of Coffee) for the German readers and audience.

Gerda Blees has been awarded the European Union Prize for Literature for Wij zijn licht (Podium publishers). The jury unanimously picked her novel as the Dutch winner of 2021. Through 25 narrators, Blees offers a new perspective in each chapter and thus describes the members of a commune who stop eating because they want to live on light and air. The novel was previously selected as Best Book of the Year by Dutch bookstores and shortlisted for the Libris Literatuur Prize 2021.

Selma van de Perre-Velleman received a Royal distinction at a festive, digital award ceremony. Dutch Ambassador to the UK, Karel van Oosterom, presented the award. Selma van de Perre, who now lives in London, was a member of the Dutch Resistance in World War Two. She is one of the few survivors of the Ravensbrück concentration camp who are still alive today and has spent the last few decades tirelessly informing younger generations about the horrors of the War.

For the first time ever, a Dutch novel has been awared the International Booker Prize. The Discomfort of Evening (Faber & Faber) by author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and translator Michele Hutchison has won this prestigious award. Rijneveld is not only the first Dutch author to be awarded this honour but also the first debut novelist and the youngest author ever to receive the International Booker Prize. The foreign rights to their novel have been sold to 21 countries, so far.

I giusti, Claudia Cozzi’s Italian translation of De rechtvaardigen for Iperborea has been awarded the Premio Tribùk dei Librai. This book trade prize, whose jury comprises 105 booksellers, is aimed to emphasize the important role bookshops play as cultural mediators.

Humankind: A Hopeful History, the English translation of historian Rutger Bregman’s bestseller De meeste mensen deugen, has been published by Bloomsbury in the UK to rave reviews. The book was hailed as the new Sapiens; the first reprint followed within a week. Online events with Bregman sold out immediately. The English translation (by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore) will be released in the US today by Little Brown.

As part of Meet The World, New Dutch Writing is teaming up with The National Centre for Writing for a series of conversations between writers and their translators. We can’t travel and meet in person right now but we can introduce you to the Dutch and Flemish authors and translators of some the most exciting new books of 2020.

Cees Nooteboom has been awarded the Formentor Literature Prize 2020, the most prestigious annual Spanish literature prize for an international author, worth 50.000 euro. The jury praised Nooteboom as a poet, novelist, essayist and critic of art who “has exceeded with his incessant creativity the limit proposed by literary genres”.

The Letter for the King, a new Netflix Original series based on the Dutch children’s classic by Tonke Dragt, will be released on March 20. It is the first time a Dutch novel is adapted by Netflix.

The youth novel Ich bin Vincent und ich habe keine Angst by Dutch author Enne Koens, German translator Andrea Kluitmann and illustrator Maartje Kuiper is nominated for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2020. The jury selected this title and the other nominations out of 647 new German children’s books. Prize winners will be announced at the award ceremony during the Frankfurter Buchmesse this fall.

In The New York Review of Books (December 5, 2019), Dutch author Philip Huff discusses two recently translated works by famous Dutch writer Gerard Reve: his classics The Evenings: A Winter’s Tale, and Childhood: Two Novellas. Both books have been translated by Sam Garrett for Pushkin Press.

Under the title ‘New Dutch Writing’, Dutch literature will be presented at more than seventy festivals and events in the United Kingdom and Ireland from October onwards. By means of this major promotional campaign, the Dutch Foundation for Literature aims to introduce new generations of Dutch authors to an English-language readership. The campaign will also draw attention to literary translation.

On the evening of Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Dutch and British representatives from the world of books and translation will gather to celebrate the launch of New Dutch Writing at The Union Club in Soho.

As part of a special cultural cooperation between Amsterdam and Paris, the Dutch Foundation for Literature makes a donation of children’s and youth literature books to the Médiathèque Françoise Sagan in Paris. Thanks to fifteen publishers, a gift of no fewer than 92 books has been compiled, of which 72 are Dutch-language and 20 are French translations of Dutch children’s books.

This year, the Netherlands is guest of honour at the Marché de la Poésie in Paris, the largest poetry festival in France. The festival takes place every year at Place Saint-Sulpice in the heart of Paris. A dozen poets will be included in the “official delegation” of the festival, they will read from their work at the main stage and will be interviewed during the festival.

From 2 to 7 May illustrator and children’s book author Mylo Freeman and children’s and youth literature author Benny Lindelauf will be in Berkeley, US to give several readings and performances at the annual Bay Area Book Festival. They will each present two panel sessions with fellow writers at the festival, Mylo Freeman will have an additional solo presentation in the Story Time Circle.

From 21 to 24 March, seven Dutch illustrators and authors of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books will visit Germany. Dutch literature will be presented in ten events at the Leipziger Buchmesse and the corresponding Leipzig Liest reading festival.

Tommy Wieringa is one of the ‘Man Booker Dozen’ – the longlist of thirteen novels that are in contention for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 – with his novel The Death of Murat Idrissi, translated by Sam Garrett (Scribe). The Man Booker International Prize celebrates the best works of translated fiction from around the world and consists of £50,000, to be split equally between the author and the translator.

From 11-14 March Barbara den Ouden, Victor Schiferli, Mireille Berman, Agnes Vogt, Bas Pauw and Alexandra Koch will represent the Dutch Foundation for Literature at the London Book Fair (table 34V at the International Rights Center). They will have meetings with approximately 125 international publishers and editors to promote Dutch literature.

This autumn the Les Phares du Nord campaign is taking twenty-one Dutch and Flemish authors to five French cities. A great deal of attention is also being paid to Dutch-language children’s and young adult literature, a much sought-after export product. From 28 November to 3 December, the Netherlands and Flanders are the ‘focus country’ at the Salon du Livre et de la Presse Jeunesse in Montreuil, France’s biggest and most important children’s book fair.

Cees Nooteboom has been awarded the Horst Bienek Prize for his entire poetic oeuvre, the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste announced Tuesday afternoon. The Akademie praises 85-year-old Nooteboom as one of the most renowned European writers.

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s debut novel De avond is ongemak (The Discomfort of the Evening) was a huge success in the Netherlands, going straight into the bestseller lists, even before the booksellers’ panel of television’s De Wereld Draait Door made it its book of the month. More than 40,000 copies were sold within a few months in the Netherlands, and, internationally, rights were rapidly sold to Suhrkamp in Germany and Faber & Faber in Britain and America. In Italy the book will be published by Nutrimenti, and a Korean translation is in preparation for Gimm-Young Publishers.

From 4 to 7 July the literary festival Bookstan - No East, No West took place in Sarajevo for the third time, with as this year’s theme Borders and Boundaries. There was an important place for literature in Dutch at this year’s festival. Curator Geert Mak, with the support of Mireille Berman of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, invited Dutch and Flemish writers to discuss borders in culture, literature and politics.

For the Dutch and Flemish presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2016, the Dutch Foundation for Literature participated in the making of a series of 25 video portraits of Dutch and Flemish writers. The portraits are now available on a dedicated website.

Dutch and Flemish literature are in the spotlight at this year’s Leipziger Buchmesse, the second largest book fair in Germany, and its simultaneous literary festival Leipzig Liest. From Thursday 15 until Sunday 18 March graphic novelists and illustrators are live at work in Atelier Parade, more than ten Dutch and Flemish authors will read from their work or be interviewed on stage, and last but not least, new digital literature is introduced to publishers and the general public.

Over 100 Dutch and Flemish authors will present themselves at more than twenty literary festivals throughout France. All this in the context of Les Phares du Nord (The Lighthouses of the North), an intensive campaign aimed at presenting Dutch literature in France, the second largest book market of Europe and the fifth worldwide.

‘This Is What We Share. Flanders and the Netherlands, guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair’ is to have a sequel. Several dozen Dutch and Flemish authors will be making appearances in cities across Germany in the coming months, from the International Literature Festival Berlin via Leipzig and Munich to the Harbourfront Festival in Hamburg.

Gips oder wie ich an einem einzigen Tag die Welt reparierte by Anna Woltz and her translator Andrea Kluitmann (published in Germany by Carlsen Verlag) has been awarded the 2017 Silberne Feder. The German association of women doctors selected Woltz’s book from a record number of over 100 submissions.

With his fourth novel, Een honger (A Hunger), previously awarded with the Dutch BNG Bank Literatuurprijs, Jamal Ouariachi wins the European Union Prize for Literature. “Besides exploring the nature of love and examining the wisdom and folly of development aid”, the jury praised _A Hunger _ for delivering “a fierce polemic against rigid sexual mores and is above all an exhilarating tour de force.”

The International Literary Prize Mondello goes to Dutch author Cees Nooteboom. The award ceremony will take place during the Salone Internazionale del Libro in Turin (Turin Bookfair) on Sunday May 21st. On this occasion he will talk with Ernesto Ferrero, Italian writer and literary critic, for an open public meeting at Sala Azzurra.

Dutch children’s author Anna Woltz and translator Andrea Kluitmann have been awarded the Katholischen Kinder- und Jugendbuchpreis for Gips oder Wie ich an einem einzigen Tag die Welt reparierte (Plaster Cast or How I Fixed the World Within A Day). The prize of 5,000 euro goes to both author and translator. Anna Woltz previously also received the Gouden Griffel, a prestigious Dutch award for children’s literature, for this novel.

Great success for Madla de Bruin-Hüblová and her Czech translation Pole je tento svět of the Dutch novel The field by Dola de Jong. The novel is nominated for the Magnesia Litera Prize, together with work by Irish author Sara Baume, Tunesian writer Hédi Kaddou, and their translators. The classic The Field was rediscovered in 2015 by Amsterdam based publishing house Cossee, and will or has been translated into nine languages, including English, German, French and Swedish.

The BolognaRagazzi Digital Award for the most innovative mobile app or web product for children is awarded on an annual basis by Bologna Children’s Book Fair in partnership with Children’s Technology Review. Out of 152 entries from 32 countries, the jury has chosen the winners of the Bolognarazzi Digital Award. In addition to the winners, six digital works received a special mention and some works were selected for a short-list. Een verre reis a children’s story of Dutch writer Toon Tellegen (Querido Kinderboek) produced by Yip Yip was chosen for a special mention.

The Flanders-Netherlands Guest of Honour programme at the Frankfurt Book Fair was a resounding success. In 2016, under the motto This Is What We Share, Flanders and the Netherlands organised the Guest of Honour programme at the largest trade book fair in the world. The ambitious programme ensured that more than 450 Dutch-language books were translated. The number of literary translations into German tripled compared to previous years. A new generation of writers was also successfully introduced into Germany. These are some of the conclusions of an evaluation conducted by the Flemish Literature Fund and the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

On February 1st Five Dials and guest editor Philip Huff will present it’s Dutch issue. The issue is devoted to introducing English-language readers to authors who haven’t yet become established in translation. It will serve as a showcase of the finest young authors writing in Dutch today.

“It was still dark, in the early morning hours of the twenty-second of December 1946, on the second floor of the house at Schilderskade 66 in our town, when the hero of this story, Frits van Egters, awoke.” Almost seventy years after this fact of fiction, the Dutch postwar classic De avonden has awoken in the minds of English readers, and how! Thanks to the the superb translation by Sam Garrett and raving reviews Pushkin Press managed to sell 14,000 copies of The Evenings. A Winter’s Tale - so far. The U.S. edition will follow soon, in 2017.

January the 17th, Dutch and UK writers come together to perform in one of the most exciting venues in London, The Tabernacle. Join best-selling authors Herman Koch and David Nicholls along with a host of all-star writers from the Netherlands and a cabaret-style evening of High Impact entertainment: readings, chat, music, food and drink.

Never before has the Frankfurt Book Fair seen a guest-of-honour country manage to clock up so many translations in the run-up to the fair. The tally for translations into German of books from and about the Netherlands and Flanders, varying from travel guides and art books to literature, has exeeded the 450 mark.

Today former managing director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, Pieter Steinz received the very first copies of Der Sinn Des Lesens, the German translation of his book Lezen met ALS (Reading with ALS). It will be available in German bookstores mid July. Sooner than expected, as the title was announced for August. Thanks to translator Gerd Busse and to Reclam Verlag the production process was shortened.

More than ten Dutch-language graphic novelists have been invited to the 17th International Comic-Salon Erlangen, the most important international comic festival in Germany. Recent work by all the authors has been translated into German. Flemish and Dutch graphic novels will be featured in two exhibitions, a live drawing workshop, a special magazine, ‘Parade’ that will be printed on the spot on the Risograph and in loads of readings and encounters.

Dutch author Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer will be on book tour in March visiting Washington DC, New York, Houston and Dallas to present the English translation of his novel La Superba. The book was translated by Michele Hutchinson and published by Deep Vellum.

Appearances today, 10 March, by Saskia de Coster and Connie Palmen at the literary festival lit.Cologne mark the start of an extensive range of literary programmes presenting the Netherlands and Flanders as joint guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In total more than 120 Flemish and Dutch authors will make appearances in seven German cities. The kick-off in Cologne coincides with the opening of Book Week in the Netherlands.

The German newsmagazine Die Zeit and Radio Bremen have awarded Anna Woltz the July LUCHS-award for her young-adult novel Meine wunderbar seltsame Woche mit Tess, translated in German by Andrea Kluitmann and published by Carlsen Verlag.

In the year in which the Netherlands and Flanders will jointly present themselves as guests of honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the Dutch Boekenweek (Bookweek) aims at Germany, under the motto Was Ich nog zu sagen hätte. This was reported today by CPNB in a press release.

This year, the Poesiefestival Berlin has invited six Dutch-speaking poets from the Netherlands and Flanders to participate in the VERSschmuggel (“verse smuggle”) translation workshop.

Each year the London Book Fair hands out awards in a number of categories as part of its International Excellence Awards program. We’re very proud to announce that the Dutch Foundation for Literature has made the shortlist for this year’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award.

In the February 20th edition of TLS, writer Claire Lowdon praises Tommy Wieringa’s These Are the Names, the third of his novels to be translated into English. She compares the novel favourably to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road:

Die Jury des Else Otten Übersetzerpreises hat beschlossen, den Preis 2014 zwei Übersetzern zu verleihen: Bettina Bach für ihre Übersetzung von Hotel Linda von Arjan Visser, im Februar 2014 unter dem Titel Der blaue Vogel kehrt zurück erschienen bei Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag in München, und Rainer Kersten für seine Übersetzung von De laatkomer von Dimitri Verhulst, im April 2014 erschienen als Der Bibliothekar, der lieber dement war als zu Hause bei seiner Frau bei Luchterhand Verlag in München.

This morning at the Frankfurt Book Fair Marente de Moor was announced the winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2014 for her second novel The Dutch Maiden (De Nederlandse maagd), published by Querido.

Words without Borders dedicates a special issue of its webmagazine to New Dutch and Flemish Writing, under the title ‘Taboos’. This issue presents short prose exploring the intrusion of the forbidden, the illegal, the unspoken into people’s lives and homes. Editors Sanneke van Hassel (writer) and Victor Schiferli (Dutch Foundation for Literature) selected work from fourteen authors, most of whom grew up in the prosperous years that the Netherlands enjoyed from the mid-1970s until the 2008 financial crisis.

The English translations of Tirza by Arnon Grunberg (tr. Sam Garrett for Open Letter Books) and The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (orig. Het verboden rijk, tr. Paul Vincent for Pushkin) have reached the finals of the 2014 Best Translated Book Awards in Fiction.

The Vondel Translation Prize 2013 has been awarded to David Colmer for The Misfortunates (Portobello Books), his translation of De helaasheid der dingen by Dimitri Verhulst. The award ceremony took place at Europe House in London on Wednesday 12 February 2014.

At the last Frankfurt Book Fair, the Dutch Foundation for Literature presented a Dutch Classics brochure. One of the many titles in it was Oeroeg by Hella S. Haasse. Even though it was written in 1948, it is still considered one of the highlights of her literary career. This fall, Portobello Books published a new translation by Ina Rilke, The Black Lake, a reference to the black lake in which Oeroeg’s father drowns.

Amsterdam Stories by Nescio, translated by Damion Searls and published by NYRB Classics, is reviewed in The Guardian. The author Nicholas Lezard compares Nescio to his near-contemporary Robert Walser: “He found little time for writing, and wrote little: but what he wrote came out of the love of it, or the urgency to express something. And that something is, very often, about the grand scheme of things, and our insignificance within it – which would in itself not be the most earth-shattering of news, were it not for the fact that there is still something rather wonderful, something holy, about this insignificance.”