Marco Kunst

Marco Kunst (b. 1966) studied philosophy and worked as a philosophy teacher at an art school. He lives in Amsterdam with his wife and daughter and has been a full-time writer since 2010. His body of work includes books for all ages in a range of genres, including history, science fiction, fantasy and fairy tales. With his imaginative young-adult novels Wiped (2004) and Isa’s Dream (2008), Kunst has shown that he does not shy away from telling great stories in the tradition of Dutch classics by the likes of Tonke Dragt and Paul Biegel. He says that he writes ‘because stories give the world sense, colour and meaning’. He received the Charlotte Köhler Stipendium in 2007, a prize for promising early-career authors. Kunst has won numerous literary awards.

Gewist

(Lemniscaat, 2004, 375 pagina's)

Science and technology remain the most important engines of progress. Perhaps technological progress could eventually produce a society like the one described in Marco Kunst’s debut novel Wiped: the ultimate welfare state where poverty, suffering, desire, and hunger for knowledge are completely unknown, in which humanity has achieved a permanent state of emotional bliss, driven and guided by a single computer. A fantasy or a terrifying vision of the world to come? The obvious question is whether a society so lacking in emotion would still be ‘human’. Would it ever be right for mankind to hand over its power and freedom to a single machine? Wiped is Marco Kunst’s response to…

Isa’s droom

(Querido Kind, 2008, 303 pagina's)

Marco Kunst is one of those rare and remarkable authors who take the genre of fantasy seriously. He demonstrated this in his award-winning science-fiction novel Gewist (Wiped, 2004) and has proved it once again with Isa’s droom, a cleverly constructed fantasy, rip-roaring adventure and sophisticated Bildungsroman, all in one book. Marco Kunst takes an exceptionally original approach and succeeds in the tricky task of creating an authentic fantasy world.

Vlieg!

(Lemniscaat, 2013, 151 pagina's)

Marius’ big brother and his short-tempered father always call him Mouse. They still see him as a little boy with an over-active imagination. His granddad’s the only one who calls him Marius and who takes all his questions and worries seriously. Marius is about to become a teenager, but he still can’t quite let go of his childhood.

Kroonsz

(Lemniscaat, 2014, 342 pagina's)

It’s one of the oldest themes in literature: how to relate to death and to our own mortality. Writing another meaningful, let alone original, book on the subject is no easy task. However, Marco Kunst’s latest young-adult novel proves that it most certainly can be done.

Het verlangen van de prins

(Gottmer, 2020, 240 pagina's)

A three-master called The Prince’s Desire has been sailing the world’s oceans for three hundred years. The crew is searching for the Indonesian island of Prince Adi. Because he is the only one who can break the curse.

Schrijver