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 b
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 ser
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. Jus
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 dotte
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 han
In this intriguing and at times devastating book, Hertmans pulls a clever trick: he offers his readers both a traditional historical novel, and an account of his writing of that no
Hagar Peeters is one the most celebrated poets in the Netherlands. She started as a performer in youth clubs, an experience that came in handy later when Peeters was invited to per
Sometimes you’ve read so many learned texts that all that learning gets jammed in your head like a cupboard in the bend in the stairs. Civil-society organisations try to get it m
TIDELINES The sea begins somewhere else each day. I head for the surf in a straight line. The waves of the retreating tide have whipped up the sand. My feet sink into it. I wade th
Seventy-five years ago, on a cold winter’s day – 27 January, 1945 – in Poland, the Dutch doctor and trainee psychiatrist Eddy de Wind saw Russian troops in white camouflage s
