Skip to main content
Surprising variations on an ice-cold story

The Bee Eaters

Peter Terrin

‘The Bee Eaters’ combines a refined style with a great deal of depth of content, eeriness with the identifiable, the everyday with what is concealed behind the facade. Terrin is not only inspired by the work of Camus but also by, for example, Franz Kafka and Willem Frederik Hermans.

With this extraordinarily successful book, Terrin confirms what gradually should become official: he and no one else is the most intriguing author of his generation.
De Tijd

‘I thought that I only needed to turn around to make everything come to an end.’ The short story collection ‘The Bee Eaters’ opens with a quote by Albert Camus. It then tries to get to grips with the strangeness that also characterises the work of Camus in seven stories.

A master in the creation of surrealistic, detached and alienating worlds
8weekly

The focal point in each of these seven variations is an act that changes everything – whether that involves a compelling interrogation as in ‘The Suspect’, or a mark of extraordinary honesty as in ‘Cleaning, or, the fortunes of Abdullah and myself’. Sometimes there is a vain struggle for something that can transform inertia into an act, but more often chance leaves the protagonist with no choice.

An astounding sampling of his abilities
Cutting Edge