Daniël Robberechts

Daniël Robberechts (1937-1992) not only wrote novels and diaries, essays and novellas, but he also published a magazine. By the time his first novel, ‘The Unstable Silence’ (De labiele stilte), was published in 1968, he was already an award-winning writer for prominent Flemish literary magazines. He is known for his experimentation and formal innovation. Recurrent themes in his work include fiction, lies, truth and the imagination.

Robberechts developed his own, individual style, sometimes adopting provocative standpoints that ran counter to dominant (literary) conventions. His most remarkable work in that respect is Writing Prague, a book that deviated substantially from standard narrative prose.

Robberechts was the leader of a small group of progressive writers in Flanders who set out to free literature from its constraints. He wanted to see books in which ‘everything’ was possible. He refused to classify his books as novels, stories, or essays, according them all equal status as, simply, writing. This liberation from genre gives his work, for all its apparent simplicity, an elusive, hypnotic quality.