At a time when being stuck indoors, unable to go out, has become the new norm and the spectre of illness (and indeed death) hangs over us constantly, it seems fitting to review a book told from the perspective of one of our most vulnerable sectors of society, the elderly. On the Bright Side is [&hel
Esther Gerritsen is a celebrated Dutch author and playwright. She’s also building a reputation as a screenwriter, with scripts including the 2019 film Instinct and the new TV series Red Light. Michele Hutchison’s translation of Gerritsen’s novel Craving was also one of the first titles publish
It’s the dead of night, the dead of winter. Unable to sleep, a young widow bakes a cake while her lover sleeps upstairs, and finds her thoughts returning to her late husband. Just fourteen months into a seemingly cloudless marriage, he went into their greenhouse one evening and shot himself. Why d
The Golden Age of Dutch art hung Ruisdael windmills and Rembrandt granaries in the gallery of our international imagination. These were picturesque images of tranquility that dotted a cloudy plain, where sea and land mixed in infinite flatness. After countless losses to the French, the English and t
How does a young man in wartime Antwerp avoid being shipped off to work in Nazi Germany? Wilfried Wils finds a convenient solution: join the local police – even if that means handing over to the Nazi occupiers other men seeking to avoid forced labour. For Wilfried is above all a survivor. The occu
1 I'm bold, I am. I'm not even afraid of dying. I cross the clearing, my shadow a king, small in size but skilful; for him too the drum-roll heralds death. Reflects our times, the speaker said raising his hand, and the leaves: it's autumn, then, and the leaves, rustling, take away the shadow, even [
