Flanders Literature helps publishers and festival organisers find that one particular title or author that is the perfect fit for their list or audience. So take a good look around, we present a selection of the finest literature from Flanders. If you like what you see, please get in touch with us for further information.
Warm, generous, down-to-earth – and yet a snake in this paradise. Spellbinding!
Geert Mak
In ‘My Parents’ Banquet Hall’, Els Snick opens the doors one last time to the iconic De Visscherie in Oostrozebeke, West Flanders. For generations, hundreds of families celebrated weddings, anniversaries and even funerals there. Shortly before the building was demolished in 2017, Snick organised one final, warm reunion – a return to a place full of high spirits, traditions and hidden histories.
This book grabbed me as fiercely as a painful contraction.
Rekto:verso
In her literary nonfiction debut ‘Monstrous Motherhood’, essayist and critic Jozefien Van Beek investigates the expectations, anxieties and contradictions surrounding motherhood. Drawing inspiration from films, artworks, and feminist thinkers, she poses a central question: is it perhaps not only mothers who are monstrous, but motherhood itself?
In ‘Archive of a Possible Loss’, Tine Hens goes in search of what is gradually slipping away from us in a rapidly changing world. She travels to landscapes under pressure – melting glaciers, depleted fields – and observes the animals and plants that are losing their habitats, such as the once so familiar lark. Along the way, she submerges herself in her own memory, where the old abundance still resonates.
Yugoslavia began as an aspiration, as the noble ideal of uniting the southern Slavic peoples. What followed was a meandering and often turbulent history: from kingdom to socialist republic, from tourist paradise to warzone.
Everyone has heard of Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books. Far fewer people know that the surname of this bestselling British author points to his Flemish roots. The people who ventured across from Flanders to England in the early Middle Ages and settled there were known as Flemings – a designation that reflected both their origins and their reputation.
From the very first page, Depelchin propels the reader forward with great intensity, through brisk dialogue and vivid descriptions.
De Lage Landen
After his parents disappear, Jeremy grows up in Ptitami, the hook-up hotel run by his grandparents. It soon turns out that the hotel is a cover for the ‘red cow gang’, a shadowy organisation that brings the radical left and the radical right together. Their activities catch the attention of private detective Diane, who thinks that Jeremy may be the key to unmasking a dangerous underground network. Depelchin addresses subjects as diverse as parenthood, idealism that flips over into extremism, look-alikes and decadence, shaping a mythical narrative.
After years of silence, 75-year-old Kristien at last decides to share her story. During one long and intense therapy session, Kristien tells her therapist, Sophie, how her life was thrown off course after a new neighbour, Tove, moved in across the street. ‘The Last Session’ takes an unexpected turn when Kristien’s revelations touch on Sophie’s own traumatic childhood, and their lives begin to intertwine.
Pointedly expressed and with appropriate irony, Debruyne uses small, apparently trivial events to show how the frustration mounts and the tension rises. ****
De Standaard
In ‘Aline’ a young woman looks back on a period marked by struggles within her relationship, the challenges of motherhood and the pressures of a hostile environment. In Aline’s relationship the implicit expectations escalate into growing conflicts. Feminist literature and therapy provide less and less of a footing and the inner tension grows. Aline takes her pent-up anger out on the men around her. With sharp prose and a keen sense of irony, Debruyne uses ‘Aline’ to probe the fault lines of progressive morality.
Sax builds the story expertly, before inflicting a swingeing sledgehammer blow near the end.
Trouw
‘Nineteen Nineteen’ follows young Henry Bennett, a former British soldier, as he returns to Flanders in 1919, only months after the Armistice. Henry is overwhelmed by memories of battles, comradeship and above all the loss of friends such as Archie, with whom he had a close bond. With empathy, sensory power and an almost cinematic style, Aline Sax weaves together past and present to create an intense psychological portrait.
A melancholy gem. A novel that slows time and invites reflection. ****
NRC
‘Whiteout’ is a moving novel about the boundaries of language and memory, and about the complex bond between parents and children. With discerning observations and stylistic precision, Six makes the melancholy of leave-taking tangible.
A multifaceted, ambitious novel that can easily be read as a muscular ode to women.
Humo
In the late nineteenth century, Amandine and her twin brother Ambrose grow up in a wealthy Antwerp banking family. When Amandine reaches adulthood, she is given in marriage to an ambitious banker who makes his fortune in the colonial rubber industry. She seeks her freedom in an affair and in the supernatural. This is the account of a woman who refuses to look away, and of an era that is at once dazzling and devastating.
This world of lies, a utopian white bouncy castle, is a place you’ll find hard to leave.
Etcetera
Eva and Zakaria, get lost on their way to the baker’s. Their quest to find their way back home turns into a complicated journey because of the lies they tell in order to get out of tricky situations. Each time they lie a white balloon appears on stage, while a giant bouncy castle burgeons in the background. At a certain point, the lie itself becomes a character, The Lie, who both challenges and helps Eva and Zakaria to come up with new fibs and excuses. Lying is not only presented as something negative but also as a creative force that adds colour to life.
A sophisticated play, bursting with poetry and ambivalences.
Etcetera
In ‘=’ a girl lies flat on the ground, in protest. In seventeen short scenes she is repeatedly approached by other characters representing the world: a tree, a river, a bicycle courier, the wind... The more the world attempts to get her moving again, the more strongly she reformulates her refusal. ‘=’ is an investigation into how the individual relates to the outside world and what resistance can mean.
In her monologue ‘Ifigeneia’, Maaike Neuville gives a new voice to the mythical daughter of Agamemnon. In this play she demands her rightful place. She asks questions about her fate, her father’s silence and the role of women as bargaining chips in a man’s world.
‘Amadou’ delivers storytelling theatre at its finest
Jury TheaterFestival
After an incident with a pet tortoise and an argument with her mother, a young girl shuts herself in her room out of frustration. There, in a vision, she is drawn into a parallel reality where animals speak and the ancestors are still alive. In that magical world she is given the task of travelling to the native village of legendary storyteller Amadou. The playful and musical play is inspired by the work of Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ and breathes new life into the centuries-old tradition of West African storytelling.
A universal, urgent story that deserves to be widely read and performed
Toneelschrijfprijs Jury
In a layered narrative, Von Winckelmann disentangles his family history and brings stories, some never before told, to life. The text switches between different layers of time and different perspectives, and connects family events with the larger history of the past 150 years: colonialism, slavery, the Second World War, nationalism and migration.
From an observation hut in the woods, forest ranger Kasper Kind spews forth his diatribe against modern society. Mankind has become so omnipresent and numerous that its very existence is a growing threat to nature, society and itself. Besides ecological catastrophe and the downfall of Western individualism, he is driven by hatred, jealousy and an event from his past.
Rich and vivid language and packed with gorgeous illustrations
Hebban
As Leonardo da Vinci wrote centuries ago, ‘We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.’ With ‘Wonderground’, Sarah Garré and Heleen Deroo want to change that. In five themed parts, the two scientists guide us through the thrilling underground world. A very special book for future subterranean heroes.
A small masterpiece that moves and consoles and at the same time makes us think.
In de boekenkast
In a fit of rage, Jackson accidentally injures his teacher’s leg. It’s his fault that Ms Annie is out of the running for months. Jackson feels terribly sorry, but he just can’t get the word ‘sorry’ past his lips. Can the strange old man who calls himself King Lear help him? Lievens succeeds in finding the perfect balance between raw reality and absurd fantasy. ‘Visiting King Lear’is a moving, tender and in places very funny novel.
A great picture book with gentle humour; an ideal bedtime story!
Boekenzoeker
Loe is a stubborn toddler who has two grown-ups. She observes the adult world with amazement, and sometimes a dash of pity. Loe doesn’t understand why big people step outside the white stripes on the zebra crossing (surely everyone knows that’s where the crocodiles lurk). They also forget to look under the bed every evening to check that no monsters are hiding there. Her child’s logic is both funny and familiar.
Bear is a self-confident expert at spotting animals. But he rarely follows his own well-meant tips – stay alert, adopt a good posture, look underwater and in the sky – and invariably peers in the wrong direction. This sparks great hilarity among young readers. Read-aloud pleasure guaranteed!
Anemone is not like other princesses. She loves everything that’s dirty or sticky, or a bit smelly. Anemone refuses to wash and gives up combing her hair. Everything sticks to her face or her hands, to her mother's great despair. ‘The Princess of Sticky Fingers’ is a modern fairy tale full of humour and with a contemporary twist.
A fun, fresh addition to the array of books that break through gender stereotypes
Cargo Confetti
Boris is getting ready for Doll and Action Man’s wedding party. He folds napkins into flowers, blows up white balloons and makes the finger food. But when he tries to get Doll to wear a princess dress, things don’t go as planned. ‘Bridesmaid Boris’ is a colourful picture book that treats diversity not as a subject but as the most natural thing in the world. The flamboyant pencil and aquarelle drawings in bright colours make the merriment leap from the pages.
An impressive account of hope, love and devastation. *****
NRC
Gardener Alois is called to arms in the summer of 1914. As time goes on, he becomes more and more conflicted, about what good is, who God is, and who he is himself. In this voluminous tale in soft greys and browns, Joris Vermassen stresses the importance of beauty and love in all their forms, against the background of the hell of the First World War. ‘Soldier-Gardener’ is a nuanced portrait of a man and a world in crisis.
Masterly. A shadow play that seems horribly topical
De Standaard
A young family goes on holiday to Italy and feels distinctly unwelcome there. The prospect of a conjuring show promises a welcome light-hearted distraction. But the magician turns out to be a hypnotist who takes a wicked pleasure in getting people to dance to his tune, with tragic consequences. Tinel makes tangible the discomfort and disquiet that are deeply embedded in Mann’s story.
Little elf Selfie and the five Gompies hear an unfamiliar sound in the forest: something keeps saying ‘oink’. The little blue animal with one ear and lilac eyes looks sad and lost. But they can’t make head or tail of its oinking language. This cheerful adventure story is full of magic and of comical chaos in which the reader becomes thoroughly immersed. A colourful fairy-tale book, it’s also an ode to stories, to nature and to the arts as an antidote to heartlessness.
A poetic and exceptionally beautiful story about knowledge, wonder and the unknown
Blunder
A famous ornithologist is firmly attached to the certainties of life, until he sees a bird he doesn’t yet know, and everything is suddenly up in the air. The solid ground under his feet falls away – or is this his chance to look at life with fresh eyes? ‘The Nameless Bird’ is a moving story about an adult who rediscovers his childlike sense of wonder.
His language roars, rumbles and crackles. Only a born storyteller can write like this.
NRC
Properzia de’Rossi is stubborn and knows what she wants: to become an artist. But in Bologna in the early sixteenth century, a young woman doesn’t have much say over her own life, let alone have the chance to become a sculptress. So Properzia decides to take her fate into her own hands. Cinematically written, full of adventure, with a great sense of humour and a female rebel in the leading role, ‘Properzia’ is what we have come to think of as a true Van Rijckeghem.
An ode to misfits, to eternally young spirits in an adult world. ****
Humo
Author Maarten Inghels feels the lack of a certain amount of danger in his life. Along with an elephant, he follows in the footsteps of Hannibal, the man who in 218 BCE crossed the Alps with thirty-seven elephants to take the Romans by surprise. As their journey goes on, a close bond develops between Gideon and Inghels, and the author allows himself to be led by the elephant instead of the other way around. The novel is presented as a factual travel account, but plays with the unbounded possibilities of fiction through surrealism.
In ‘It Sparkles’, Lara Taveirne and Marieke De Maré have collected a series of poetic and moving short stories set in Bruges, the town about which they wrote together between 2023 and 2025. The stories, written alternately by each of them, arose from their meetings with various residents of Bruges. Each story depicts a snapshot of human connection. The stories are small in scale but extensive in their emotional reach. Both authors write with a keen eye for detail and a big heart for people who generally tend to be invisible.
A clever, caustic book that, like every good comedy, leaves a bitter aftertaste.
NDR Germany
From one day to the next, Berlin is swarming with elephants. As a thank you’ for tighter legislation governing the import of hunting trophies, the president of Botswana has given the Germans 20,000 elephants as a present. Germany’s federal chancellor Winkler is challenged to deal with the crisis, while elections are due and the extreme right is hot on his heels in the polls. Gaea Schoeters has written a light and humurous political satire that interrogates the way the West treats Africa and is a plea for ecological seriousness.
A novel that depicts today’s world in all its disorientation and ambiguity. *****
Knack
Mira looks back at her time in the company of Ludwig von Sachsenheim, a famous director and artist. Years ago she decided to join Ludwig’s social-artistic experiment in Berlin, the Neue Gesellschaft, a kind of artistic variant of Big Brother. The experiment runs aground, however, when Ludwig is taken to court for sexual intimidation, subsidy fraud and other charges. Several years later, when a journalist approaches Mira, she looks back on the ambiguous part she played in the dynamics of the Neue Gesellschaft.
In simple words and sentences, Janneke Schotveld brings the world of best friends Hanna and Hamza to life beautifully, in a book that is witty and cheerful without ever being shallow. In every spread, Arevik d’Or’s colourful drawings exude exactly that same atmosphere, with their relaxed lines and their accessibility. ‘Hanna and Hamza’ is airy and light, but manages to touch the reader all the same. A beautiful gem for early readers.
One of the most impressive of new European writers, for both page and screen.
John Boyne, Irish Times
In ‘Beginnings’ the protagonist returns to the seaside resort on the Belgian coast where he grew up. On the sea dyke he looks at the building in which his family ran a hotel for generations, a place imbued with memories, stories and scars. The novella is a free, associative narrative in the poetic and evocative style that Angelo Tijssens has made his own, it's constructed out of short, sensual scenes that dig deeper and deeper into a personal and collective sense of nostalgia.
After the last page you immediately want to read it again. ****
De Standaard
As children Felix and Louise, brother and sister, are inseparable. Everything changes when, on holiday, they are approached by the father of their playmates. After that, nothing is ever the same. Felix’s mental health gradually declines and Louise enjoys feeding her brother's fears and driving him further into psychological isolation. Lenny Peeters plays a brilliant game with chronology and perspective. In a story that topples at an accelerating pace, the reader is challenged to discover the truth.
Kimia is a brave and self-assured girl, growing up in the heart of Africa. In Europe, meanwhile, the continent of Africa is being divided up as if it’s a no man’s land. The story of Kimia is interspersed with spreads about the historical context, from before 1884 to the independence of Congo in 1960 and beyond. This sorely needed book shows at a child’s level how terrible Congo's colonization was and the impact it had, and is still having, on the people of Congo.
Supremely painstaking and precise. An idiosyncratic interplay between content and form. *****
NRC
Shortly after the birth of her child, motherhood draws a young woman into an existential crisis. Love for the baby doesn’t come; the alienation, despair and exhaustion are total. In a fragmented form and with penetrating insights, ‘The Animals Within’ describes her struggles. The book is a clever experimental exploration of the destabilizing experience of postpartum depression, told through a woman for whom the normal world becomes incomprehensible.
Nuyts has written a novel that is bizarre, tense and surprising. ‘Groundwork’ is a penetrating, socially critical and deeply literary work. ****
De Standaard
From her colony in the Horn of Africa a naked mole rat was sent to Vaderlandsplein, a square in Brussels. She waits in her hiding place for a briefing from her colony, which fails to arrive. While awaiting the briefing, she keeps herself busy by digging, undermining her new city. Sink holes appear everywhere, literally fragmenting the infrastructure of the political heart of Belgium and Europe. A meeting and growing friendship with a climate activist, however, produces an unexpected twist.
Skorobogatov opens his heart and shows the pain that became the essence of his life.
De Tijd
Aleksandr Skorobogatov tells the story of his son. When the boy is fifteen, the author receives an email from him after they’ve not been in touch for years. The restored contact is only brief, since after barely ten days of emailing back and forth, the boy is brutally attacked and dies a violent death. More than twenty years pass before Aleksandr Skorobogatov tells the poignant story of his loss, and looks back at their relationship and the reason they didn’t see each other for so long.
In beautifully detailed black-and-white drawings alternated with series of colourful, breathtaking spreads in acrylic, Leo Timmers depicts the close friendship between Mimi and her horse. For ‘Mimi & Me’, he learned how to use a dip pen to make fine line drawings full of shading, a supremely successful choice that places a lot of emphasis on the horse’s muscular body and its body language. This intimate, moving book marks a new step in Timmers' oeuvre.
Emily is fourteen and convinced that she’s going to make it in Hollywood. She also resolves to become popular at last. How hard can it be? Meanwhile she finds herself wrestling with her sense of loyalty to her divorced parents. Then, to top it all, she falls in love with a girl. Full of sarcasm and irony, and with an outlandish gift for exaggeration, this clumsy drama queen is a character to embrace with all your heart.
Modern diplomacy, that centuries-old dialogue between nations, must urgently reinvent itself. What might that look like? In ‘The World and the Earth’, David Van Reybrouck offers a passionate and boundary-pushing proposal to radically broaden our thinking – and our politics.
A unique walking book in lively, meandering fragments.
De Morgen
In ‘Look! Over There, Look!’ 81-year-old Eric de Kuyper explores the urbanisation of Brussels’ municipalities and neighbourhoods in his signature, slightly old-fashioned style. He reflects on the architecture of streets and houses, façades and interiors encountered during his walks. The book offers a personal perspective on the city’s ‘architectural misery’, while also celebrating successful interventions in the Belgian capital.
a significant contribution to the issue of war and peace in this book
Philosophy Journal
Much is said about war, but too little is truly thought through. Judged by the damage it causes, the scale of suffering it inflicts, and the moral guilt it entails, war is the greatest evil on Earth. From this follows that no humane goal can ever justify war. This is the starting point of Gerard Bodifée’s new book ‘War’ – a burning issue in light of today’s threats of conflict.
One word comes to mind to sum up so much beauty: a masterpiece. We are dealing with a pupil of W.G. Sebald.
Le Soir
After the death of his mother in 2022, Joseph Pearce, author of several highly acclaimed novels in Flanders, decides to take stock of his life. The writer, who grew up in a loving family and amidst the bustle of a family-run wholesale business in colonial goods, struggles with his sexual orientation and, as the son of a Jewish German, feels a deep connection to the history of the Jewish people. In the Flanders of the 1950s and 1960s, this is no easy task.
Frivolity and seriousness ideally go hand in hand, argues Peter Venmans. This book is yet another fine example of his thoughtful approach.
Doorbraak.be
Since winning the Socrates Cup in 2023 for his book Hospitality, author Peter Venmans has become known for his accessible and engaging essays on a wide range of philosophical themes. His books often revolve around the linguistic and philosophical analysis of a concept that fundamentally characterises our time – usually because the concept has ‘disappeared’. Because we no longer reflect on it. Because we conveniently reduce its meaning to a one-dimensional interpretation. Or because we take the virtue it represents too much for granted.
‘Peremen!’, the song that reveals a vital piece of European history
De Standaard
When the streets of Minsk filled with demonstrators in the summer of 2020, cameras captured a group of cheerfully dressed musicians performing a rousing version of ‘Peremen!’ (‘Changes!’), the Soviet cult hit by the band Kino. The crowd sang along at full volume, and the song became the anthem of the protests against Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko. Peter Vermeersch was so moved by the footage that he decided to chart the erratic life of this pop song. The result is ‘Pulse’, the story of a song that, in passing, reveals a crucial chapter of recent European history.
His calmly crafted sentences, when read closely or reread, reveal something truly spectacular.
NRC
In Stefan Brijs' latest book, ‘The Patience of Flowers’, he once again takes the reader to Andalusia. As the climate becomes increasingly erratic, he observes the beauty and vulnerability of nature with a pen that is as sharp as it is poetic – both deeply empathetic and strikingly precise.
The Meuse, the river of nearly 1,000 kilometres that flows through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, is a source of life, home to distinctive fauna and flora. Beyond that, it also shapes the landscape, serves as an archaeological site, a place of worship, a historical crossroads, a political boundary, an economic lifeline, a strategic military axis, and a muse for artists. For millennia, peoples have settled along its banks, learning to cope with the Meuse’s capricious floods.
