Skip to main content
A surrealistic story about the search of two sisters for their mother

Giant

Annelies Verbeke

Two sisters, Hannah and Kim, were left by their mother under dramatic circumstances twelve years ago. Since that time no one has heard anything from her. Confronted with both professional and romantic issues, the two sisters decide to rethink their lives and leave for Australia. There they start on a suicidally inspired journey, in the course of which they are able to locate their mother, who is living with a group of Aboriginal women. They are confronted, largely against their will, with the questions that face them in their own lives.

Verbeke has the ability to evoke the fears and doubts of someone imprisoned in the void of modern life
NRC Handelsblad

Annelies Verbeke succeeds in constructing an extraordinary experience out of a tale that initially seems ordinary. Her characters, whose story distantly recalls the exhausting escapade of ‘Thelma and Louise’, are in one way familiar, yet in another way they intrigue us by resolutely placing the meaning of their lives in the balance and exploring the boundaries of their own existence.

‘Giant’ is a story about the troubled self-awareness of two young women in a world in which other people are unfathomable strangers. Verbeke shows herself to be a skilful stylist with a startling, very individual voice, that beckons the reader along in an intriguing universe shaped by a female sensitivity.

Palpable magic: that’s Annelies Verbeke’s trademark.
Trouw
Style: evocative, dazzling, every sentence a delight.
BN/De Stem