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Politics and social issues

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  • Cover When the water breaks
    Cover When the water breaks
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    When the Water Breaks
    Empathy is the raw material all his books are made of
    Humo

    This is the true story of a fisherman and his daughter, who fled their home country Vietnam some time ago. Hung crossed the ocean in his small fishing vessel to start a new life in a village behind a high sea wall. Quyen opened a successful restaurant, but is now struggling with an identity crisis.

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  • Cover The Age of Charlie Chaplin
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    The Age of Charlie Chaplin
    The alternation between zooming in to focus on the films and panning out to the world stage works well.
    De Standaard

    Matthijs de Ridder gives a sparkling account of an artist who was able to embody all the important themes of the 20th century. Using new sources, he casts a fresh glance over the life and work of Chaplin. At the same time, ‘The Age of Charlie Chaplin’ is a phenomenal cultural history of a turbulent period that defines our worldview to this very day.

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  • Jihad van liefde
    Jihad van liefde
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    A Jihad for Love
    A passionate plea against hate, thirst for revenge and the urge for destruction
    De Volkskrant

    El Bachiri transforms the pain he suffered into a message of love and humanity, in which he appeals to western Muslims for a more humanist approach to Islam. ‘A Jihad for Love’ is the answer to the hatred of those who wish to divide us, of those who propagate violence and terrorism. 

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  • Cover Berlin. Life in a Divided City
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    Berlin. Life in a Divided City
    With his talent for well-balanced, focused writing, De Moor now occupies an unrivalled position within Dutch-language literature.
    Knack

    How did the Nazis poison the bustling life of the city? Which communist absurdities were the residents of East Berlin confronted with in the GDR? How did the city transform after ‘die Wende’?

    In ‘Berlin. Life in a Divided City’, Piet de Moor goes in search of the soul of the mythical metropolis, a city that suffered like no other during the violent history of the 20th century. The result is an informative and kaleidoscopic book that is truly worth reading.

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  • Cover The Demons of Leonard Cohen
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    The Demons of Leonard Cohen
    Francis Mus displays an expertise not seen before by Cohen’s Canadian critics.
    Brian Trehearne

    Authority on Cohen Francis Mus portrays the real Cohen and his recurring demons. He searched for and found ‘Cohen pieces’ that never have been written about. This book offers a unique view into Leonard Cohen’s soul.

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  • Cover The Johad Caravan
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    The Jihad Caravan
    It brings the reader closer to the origins and the reality of armed jihad than most of the analyses.
    MO* Magazine

    Together AlDe’emeh and Stockmans travel to Zarqa in Jordan, the cradle of international jihad and  AlDe’emeh’s birthplace in a refugee camp. They returned with surreal stories that make this book unforgettable.

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  • Cover Authority
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    Authority
    His argument for a collective authority is inspired and well-founded, but also provocative and utopian.
    Humo

    Verhaeghe seeks and finds a new interpretation in groups, which lend authority to an individual or an institution, whether they be parents’ associations, groups of active citizens or shareholders’ meetings.

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  • Cover This Is My Farm
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    This Is My Farm
    A disconcerting, important, humble book
    David Van Reybrouck

    The Hedwige Polder, the most famous stretch of reclaimed land in the Belgian lowlands, is to be flooded again no matter what. It has become symbolic of old farmland forced to make way for new nature reserves.

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  • Cover Love: An Impossible Longing?
    Illustrated in colour
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    Illustrated in colour
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    Love: An Impossible Longing?
    We live in the illusion we can buy anything. Also love.
    Dirk De Wachter

    'Love: An Impossible Longing?' is a plea to take love as it comes and behave naturally. Only then, by not forcing something, love can appear gloriously.

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  • Cover Grand Central Belge
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    Grand Central Belge
    Verbeken brings back to life the era of the great expectations
    De Volkskrant

    Pascal Verbeken registers the small and the large signs of the times. He listens to a multicoloured collection of Belgians and their unique, sometimes tragic stories. ‘Grand Central Belge’ is a requiem for a divided country that does not succeed in chasing its old demons away.

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  • Cover Beyond Democracy
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    Beyond Democracy
    Lucid, captivating, no breaking news but breaking insights
    Humo

    In 'Beyond Democracy' Luc Huyse analyses in a clearly structured exposé society to the core. Modern society has no segment left in which the market and market logic have not taken over.

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  • Cover The Limits of the Market
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    The Limits of the Market
    Nobody has taught me as much about the euro crisis as Paul De Grauwe.
    Paul Krugman

    Do the financial crisis and the growing inequality create a new balance of power between the free market and the government? Are we witnessing a turnover of capitalism and does the government take over again?

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  • Cover The Power of Paradise
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    The Power of Paradise
    Provocative and elegant, visionary and stylish. This European dares to tell the hard truths.
    Chief Geopolitical Analyst for Stratfor

    We, as Europeans, feel as if the future passes right by us. The crisis rages over our continent like a storm and dismantles all our certainties. Are the fundaments of Europe crumbling? And do we actually understand what is going on?

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  • Cover A Paradise Blown Out of the Storm
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    A Paradise Blown Out of the Storm
    Decreus’ critical discussion of dominant market thinking in our depoliticized society is clever and provocative.
    Politiek en Samenleving

    Decreus sets out to subject the current political establishment to fierce criticism. He unmasks representative democracy as in truth an aristocracy and points to the incompatibility of the democratic ideal with the premises of neoliberal policies and market thinking.

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  • Cover Against Elections
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    Against Elections
    Van Reybrouck manages to convince the reader that drawing lots would be an effective way to breathe new life into our enfeebled democracy.
    Henriette Roland-Holst Prize jury

    Van Reybrouck argues with crystal clarity that drawing lots would be an effective way to revitalize our enfeebled democracy and ensure that citizens participate once more in the social structures that shape them and their lives.

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  • Cover Identity
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    Identity
    His argument is lucid, eloquent and compelling, and easy to follow, even for laypersons.
    Athenaeum Bookstore

    Based on his clinical experience as a psychotherapist, Verhaeghe shows how our changing society works through into the psychological problems that afflict individuals today.

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  • Cover Borderline Times
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    Borderline Times
    An eye-opener for everyone who thinks he/she is normal and that only others suffer psychologically.
    Yves Desmet

    In 'Borderline Times' Dirk De Wachter describes how the nine symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are present in all of us. His diagnosis upon observing our society is: ‘borderline’.

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  • Cover Love in a Time of Loneliness
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    Love in a Time of Loneliness
    The book is both entertaining and intellectually challenging.
    Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies

    Verhaeghe looks into the differences between male and female sexual fantasies and recasts the Freudian anti­thesis, Eros and Thanatos, as a contrast between two different forms of sexual pleasure.

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  • Cover Darwin in the Supermarket
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    Darwin in the Supermarket
    Fluid and clear, the author’s approach is didactic yet never pedantic.
    De Standaard

    The author continually speaks to his readers and integrates their responses into his text by concurring with or contradicting them. This rhetorical strategy makes what he writes all the more convincing.

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  • Cover Peace Be With You, Sister
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    Peace Be With You, Sister
    A book and a study of a kind of which there are all too few
    De Standaard

    ‘Peace Be With You, Sister’ is the story of Muriel Degauque, a Belgian who became the first and only Western woman to carry out a suicide attack. She drove her white Mercedes from Brussels to Baghdad in order to blow herself up in the name of Allah.

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  • Cover The End of Psychotherapy
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    The End of Psychotherapy
    Heartfelt, provocative and controversial
    HP/De Tijd

    Are we experiencing the dying throes of psychotherapy? Is Freud finished for good? Following a line of reasoning as subtle as it is logically necessary, Paul Verhaeghe shows how psychotherapy and the psychiatric profession have lost ground due to the combined effect of pseudo-scientific psychology and the corruptive influence of the pharmaceutical industry.

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  • Cover The History of the World of Tomorrow
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    The History of the World of Tomorrow
    The clear prose offers a broad readership a reassuring perspective on a confusing time.
    De Standaard

    These turbulent times represent an enormous challenge to all of us, the world over. New questions that lack clear answers are making many people feel insecure. But fear is a poor counsellor.

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  • Cover The Plague
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    The Plague
    A talented writer, original and funny, who is definitely one to watch
    Le Monde

    While working on his thesis, David Van Reybrouck came across the accusation that the Belgian writer and Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck had plagiarised from the work of the South African author Eugène Marais. ‘The Plague’ sweeps the reader along in a thrilling literary adventure, which leaves its image on the mind’s eye long after the last page has been turned.

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