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.
In ‘To Blackbird Creek’, Stefan Hertmans narrates the coming of age of a boy in a Flemish village in the 1950s and 60s, in a grotesque, but just as often moving way. His budding sexuality and lively imagination so take possession of him that the world appears dark, terrifying and full of secrets.
More beautiful and more moving prose has not appeared this year. A gem.
Vrij Nederland
Thisbook is narrated by the author as a young boy, who listens to his mother read out letters from her absent sister-in-law, a Catholic nun doing missionary work in far-off China. The novelty is the narration of the story from a child’s perspective – a child who is so close to the ground that he tells people apart by their feet.
She is the only philosopher writing in Dutch who can make philosophy not just nonacademic and understandable but moving.
Herman De Coninck
The great value of Patricia De Martelaere's essays ultimately lies in what makes them rise above philosophical debate. Whereas philosophers like to make readers furrow their brows as deeply as possible, the author excels at laying out a clear line of argument, avoiding jargon and applying convincing logic.
Geert De Kockere’s poetic language and Lieve Baeten’s gorgeous illustrations lift this book above the average, as does its content: together with Elly Dark Blue, readers learn that there is more beyond a monochromatic world.
Love and what follows is the theme of this collection of ten stories: about the catastrophe ánd the tenderness of sex, about habit, love-hate, memory, selfpity, rollicking revenge.
‘The Charred Alphabet’ follows the life of the author from October 1990 to September 1991. This literary diary is a colourful mixture of stories, impressions of and reflections on literature, art, love, nature, politics and growing old.
An original and particularly funny novel full of amusing melancholy
NRC Handelsblad
Lanoye has managed to deal with the banal subject of a boy's unrequited love in a thoroughly unbanal way. This auto-biographical story retains its power because it is imbedded in the hilarious background of a childhood in Flanders around 1970. With his rich, melancholic style Lanoye has been able to create a modest monument for his first `touching' romance.
Complete hopelessness without slipping into pathos or protective irony
Ons Erfdeel
In this collection of stories Berckmans shows the most unsavoury and corrupt side of reality. The unstable characters bear their existential emptiness without illusions, self-deceiving optimism is alien to them. Every sentence of Berckmans is filled with the buzz of rock ‘n roll.
A moving book with a rich and functional recounting of anecdotes
Het Parool
‘White is Always Nice’ is a moving story about origins, mourning and language. It is the extended monologue of an old woman who has just died but cannot stop talking. In a one-sided conversation with her silent son, she keeps up her usual non-stop chatter as her body is laid out and preparations are made for the wake.
‘Aunt Jeannot’s Hat' is set in a suburb of the city shortly after the Second World War. The air is alive with the excitement of newfound freedom and life has taken its leave of traditional conventions. The magnificent and the mundane aspects of a young boy’s life are beautifully depicted in many small details.
Fresh and candid. De Kuypers’s amused style lifts everything up out of the everyday.
Vrij Nederland
At the end of the 1940s a family from Brussels resume a pre-war tradition of spending the summer in Ostend, on the Belgian coast. As he plays, the young boy Eric takes it all in: the sights, textures, tastes and smells – all the things his adult self will remember with delight and wonder.
Claus reveals his mastery by producing a sentimental story about a total failure
De Morgen
In ‘A Tender Destruction’ Claus uses a number of tried and trusted themes. However, he tells the tale of this tragic love affair masterfully, without ever becoming depressing.
Ingeniously constructed and imaginative tales arouse emotion and a sense of tragedy.
Het Parool
The four stories in this debut provide a caricatured but equally nostalgic and loving impression of ‘La Flandre Profonde’ and demonstrate Lanoye’s feel for humour and style. Although the main character from ‘A Butcher’s Son with Glasses’ resembles the author in many ways, these stories are nevertheless loaded with surrealism, wit and crackling irony.
Within the space of three days, six people are murdered. All the evidence leads to Angelo Ledda, a ruthless hitman who suffers from progressive memory loss. A well-researched crime novel by the 'Godfather of the Flemish thriller'.
‘The Man Who Found a Job’ is a milestone in Brusselmans' extensive oeuvre, serving as unique point of reference for one of Flanders’ most read authors. The combination of desperation and emptiness and the sardonic indulgence of this general malaise in the innocent, unsuspecting citizen caused a major stir in the traditional Flemish literature of the 1980s.
Central to ‘The Accursed Fathers’ is the life story of Pamela. Rejected by her mother who had been hoping for a boy, browbeaten by her father whom she refuses to hate, the heroine of the story is the eternal victim of a hereditary curse. Through her central character, Monika van Paemel exposes the subjugation of women
Moving, interesting and a literary jewel in terms of its form
Vrij Nederland
‘Letter to Boudewijn’ is a lesson in social history, a meticulous description of village life, and an autobiography all in one. It is a book in which the author confronts himself with his origins, with the shift from material to spiritual poverty, and with sorrow at the loss of solid ground in a group of people who stick together.
In ‘Writing Prague’ Daniël Robberechts tries to create a written portrait of this turbulent city during the end of the 1960s and the decade that followed it. As it goes on, the web becomes increasingly tangled, and ‘Writing Prague’ turns into a book about writing a book, begging the question: is ‘writing’ Prague even possible anymore?
Each poem attests to a supreme form of living – even in failure
Tom Van Inschoot
Acutely aware of the destructive power of time, Bontridder does not set an ethical or aesthetic example to his audience. Rather, he holds a broken mirror up to them, creating a reflection in which the poet and reader rebel against their powerlessness.
Great because of its simplicity and its instantly gripping truthfulness
Gazet van Antwerpen
A monumental book and true Flemish classic. It is a spectacular expression of Boon’s compassion for the committed individual who, despite all adversity, wants to keep on believing in socialist ideals.
With frightening precision, 'The Year of Cancer' sums up just how ugly love can be
De Morgen
Pierre, a suave young man from the insurance and banking world falls for Toni, a simple and somewhat unstable beautician working in show business. The couple gradually drift apart, until the inevitable break-up follows. Pierre continues to read Toni’s horoscope, Cancer. A couple of years later, he is called to her sickbed.
The Heylen family hold an annual memorial for their dead mother in the vicarage of a Flemish village. This year, however, the solemn day sees friction and misunderstandings bubble to the surface, which makes for a chaotic gathering. In a haze of sexuality and violence, the hour of truth draws closer.
Sabine, who is confined to a wheelchair, is praying for a miracle. In exchange for a cure, she promises God to serve as a nun for the rest of her life. Her sole condition is that she gets to spend one more year with her lover Joris. Sabine is cured, but does not keep her promise: she marries Joris. When her husband and child die, she is racked with guilt.
Distinctly innovating poetry resulting in a whirling reading experience
Literaire Canon
Using old myths of fertility described by Frazer, biblical and Christian references and literary quotations, Claus evokes a mythical and fatal family constellation in which the mother, the father, the son and the beloved play roles that are alternately driven by desire and love, but also by fear and hatred. Definitely one of the highpoints in his oeuvre.
A fast-paced and nuanced story, a strong indictment of the exploitation of the child
NBD Biblion
A young girl from a working-class family gets up early for her first day at the brickworks. This first day at work means both the end of her childhood years and her ‘initiation’ into adult life. She makes her first acquaintance with the gruelling work, the brutality of the workers and the tyranny of Krevelt, the dreaded boss. She can see only one way out: the young love that blossoms between her and an apprentice. But will that be enough of an anchor to keep her from drifting into the danger that fate is mercilessly pushing her towards?
His is some of the most exquisite work to be found in Dutch.
Het Vaderland
‘Winter in Antwerp’ is the singular follow-up to Gilliams’ ‘Elias or the Struggle with the Nightingales’. Elias now having lost his mother and spent months in hospital, is walking to his elderly father’s house. In brief, associative, yet carefully composed chapters, the narrator examines his past, his obsessions and his fears.
‘The Battle with the Angel’ tells of the life of a community, spread over several generations, but primarily between the world wars. The work bears witness to an unbridled creative force masterfully endeavouring to portray the contrast between primeval nature and decadence. Teirlinck never moralises or lectures, but is majestic and full of compassion for his characters.
After a mysterious journey in a train populated with sleeping passengers, three train travellers find themselves in a strange, shadowy land, a timeless transition area, to which each responds in his own way.
At the end of his life and in the first two decades of the 20th century, Gezelle was hailed by the avant-garde as the founder of modern Flemish poetry, and his unique voice was also belatedly recognised in the Netherlands and often compared with his English contemporary Gerard Manley Hopkins.
A literary all-rounder who explores all facets of life
De Volkskrant
‘Pitfalls’ is a varied collection of letters, verse and short stories. The excerpts from the letters – which were never intended to be made public – caused a furore at the time. The title refers to the obstacles between Minne and the process of writing, between the author and publication – in other words, to the aforementioned struggle. As Minne put it: ‘Caution, enter at your peril!’
An enthralling creation myth with almost biblical appeal and ambition
De Morgen
In ‘Houtekiet’, Walschap gives a concise, powerful portrayal of his own ideal of the individual and society. ‘Houtekiet, that’s me,’ he admitted. This is a novel about civilisation and faith that goes beyond the traditional differences between culture and nature, between institutionalised religion and individual vitalism.
Streuvels is the Tolstoy of the Lowlands. Magisterial.
David Van Reybrouck
This story gives an inimitable description of the monotony and finiteness of life against the backdrop of a drunken, nocturnal atmosphere in which dream and reality are masterfully interwoven. With this novella, bathed in a magic-realistic atmosphere, Streuvels has written one of the loveliest short stories in Dutch literature.
In ‘The Van Paemel Family’, Cyriel Buysse addresses the social exploitation and immense poverty of the rural population. Buysse paints a picture of how the farmer becomes ruined and his family falls apart as a result of socioeconomic conditions. Although Buysse offers no solutions to the conflict, there is still a glimmer of hope.
