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Debut

trans­lated into
  • W.
    W.
    W.
    A fresh, original debut novel.
    Trouw

    Olaf's world is shaken by the sudden reappearance of his best friend W. in Antwerp. The news marks the start of thirteen gripping days in which he goes searching for answers. Why did W. disappear? How real are Olaf's memories of their friendship? Hiemstra's debut pays tribute to youth and the idealism that goes with it. An addictive novel with distinctly layered characters, playful in its language and composition.

  • Cover of the book
    Cover of the book
    The Edges
    Bursts with sensuality & deep emotion. A modern masterpiece *****
    The Daily Telegraph

    This raw, semi-autobiographical debut tells the story of the unnamed protagonist’s childhood and a night with his former lover. It takes the reader through an emotional landscape that’s reminiscent of Ocean Vuong and Douglas Stuart. In cinematic scenes, Angelo Tijssens depicts the pain and longing of a life spent searching.

  • Cover of Pork Chops
    Cover of Pork Chops
    Pork Chops
    De Gryse knows how to grab a reader by the scruff of the neck
    De Morgen

    Marieke is the youngest of four sisters in a family with an absentee father and an unstable mother. She works in a care home, where she’s happiest in the kitchen. 'Pork Chops' a tragicomic tale about sticking up for yourself and about caring – but above all it’s an ode to comfort food.

     

  • Cover of All Is Safe Here
    Cover of All Is Safe Here
    All Is Safe Here
    A raw, physical account of grief and goodbyes****
    HUMO

    A beautifully written debut about loss and (step) motherhood. With immense compassion, Van Offel draws psychological portraits that cannot be viewed independently from identity politics and the wider political situation in Israel.

  • Cover Who Was the Hat Maker?
    Cover Who Was the Hat Maker?
    Who Was the Hatter?
    A marvel of penmanship *****
    De Volkskrant

    Twelve years after they had a short-lived but passionate relationship, the reserved Hermine and the tormented, suicidal writer Didier, drive to a conference in Vienna together. In this autobiographical love tragedy, Zvonik investigates with a delicate pen and psychological finesse to what extent it is possible to love someone, while at the same time keeping your distance.

  • Cover North
    Cover North
    North
    Wild, dark, romantic and almost addictively well-written ****
    Focus Knack

    ‘North’ is a carefully crafted and addictively well-written debut novel about ‘indecision in the choice’: the choice between two men, between art and life, between Vancouver and the harsh life in the north, and between the musical styles that are entwined with each location.

  • Cover The Melting
    330,000 copies sold
    Cover The Melting
    330,000 copies sold
    The Melting
    A debut that you wish every writer would write: surprising, imaginative and merciless *****
    De Standaard

    Eva, in her late twenties, travels back to her native village with a big block of ice in her car. She has been invited to a viewing of a new milking parlour at a dairy farm where her childhood friend Pim still lives, an occasion that will also serve to commemorate the death of his older brother, who drowned as a young man. Slowly it becomes clear she returned to her village to take revenge for what happened to her as a child...

  • Cover Cinderella
    Cover Cinderella
    Cinderella
    So confusing, intriguing, dark and horrifying that you want to devour every single page *****
    Cutting Edge

    'Cinderella' is a semi-autobiographical novel about the son of a prostitute who opens a brothel and becomes his mother’s pimp. It is a grand novel, written in raw prose, tackling the tribulations of running a brothel and the inescapable relationship between mother and child. It is a refreshing combination of filth and the sublime, of tragedy and comedy.

  • Cover Woesten
    Cover Woesten
    Woesten
    Enchantingly beautiful
    De Wereld Draait Door

    ‘Woesten’ recounts a suffocating story full of village gossip about a family in which fate strikes with a heavy hand, leaving no-one unscathed. It portrays a realistic, almost naturalistic image of a typical rural village in the early 20th century and offers a nuanced view of the psychology of intriguing characters.

  • Cover Many Heavens Beyond the Seventh
    Cover Many Heavens Beyond the Seventh
    Many Heavens Beyond the Seventh
    Delightful
    HP/De Tijd

    Five people, linked together, tell their story. They talk about unexpected happiness that makes things complicated, about secrets that seem too big to handle, about the complex art of being young, about obstacles that seem like mountains, about keeping on trying, to the point where no one can go any further.

  • Cover - Woman Country
    Cover - Woman Country
    Woman Country
    A wonderful story, impossible to put down
    De Morgen

    The novel presents a Moroccan outlook on the differences between Moroccans in Morocco and those who have emigrated; between their own values and Western values; between tradition and the modern ways of thinking that men find so hard to deal with.

    Lamrabet creates above all a subtle and convincing portrait of a fascinating woman, who, standing firmly by her decisions, must pay the social and intellectual price.

  • Cover Sleep!
    Most translated debut
    Cover Sleep!
    Most translated debut
    Sleep!
    Funny, singular and moving
    De Morgen

    ‘Sleep!’ is a convincing novel about two insomniacs, in which the author uses the complex personalities of her characters to pen a strikingly insightful vision of life and its experiences. Verbeke writes about the underdog, about people whose poignant yearning for a normal life arouses our compassion.

  • Cover Marcel
    Cover Marcel
    Marcel
    A literary debut of great originality
    The Times Literary Supplement

    This novel, peppered with countless striking metaphors and colloquialisms, describes the vivid history of a family in a Flemish village. The essence of the novel is a cautious fumbling for truth. A young boy attempts to fathom his grandmother’s proud, dour demeanour and to get closer to his teacher. But above all he wants to understand what happened to Marcel.

  • Cover By the Sea
    Cover By the Sea
    By the Sea
    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.

  • Cover A Butcher's Son with Glasses
    Cover A Butcher's Son with Glasses
    A Butcher's Son with Glasses
    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.

  • Cover 'Villa des Roses'
    Cover 'Villa des Roses'
    Villa des Roses
    One can speak of Elsschot’s oeuvre as great European literature
    Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

    Set in a down-market Paris boarding house before World War I, this novel is a masterpiece of ironic black humour. The Villa’s owner, the energetic Madame Brulot, is childless and lavishes more affection on her pet monkey, Chico, than on her husband, an embittered ex-solicitor.