Maarten Asscher trained as a lawyer, then became a writer and a publisher before turning to bookselling as director of the Athenaeum Bookshop in Amsterdam. He has published a collection of poetry, Night Fodder (2002), a novel called The Hour and the Day (2005) and a book about the Netherlands and its water, H2Olland (2009). Five of his books have appeared in German translation. He also translates poetry and has contributed columns to various newspapers.
(Augustus, 2009, 222 pagina's)
H2Olland is the least assertive book ever written about the Netherlands. Here is a Dutchman who confesses to feeling ill at ease with his nationality, who during his life, as he puts it, ‘has more often daydreamed of turning his back on the Netherlands than of crawling deeper into its lap.’ That is nevertheless exactly what he does, he crawls into his country’s lap and shows it to us at its most intimate level.
(Atlas Contact, 2013, 224 pagina's)
In attempting to go straight to the heart of a matter, it helps if you simplify reality, or magnify some part of it. This is what Maarten Asscher does in his collection of personal essays Apples and Oranges, using the method of comparison to shed light on an array of subjects in the field of art, history and literature.
