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.
The book is wonderful, which I know is strange to say about grief, but feeling and writing are two different things and the text is swift and lean and moving.
Siri Hustvedt
In 2017 artist couple Fleur Pierets and Julian Boom started out on a plan to marry each other in all twenty-two countries where it was legal, at the time, for two women to wed. During the wedding in Paris, Julian became unwell on the steps to the town hall. She turned out to have several tumours in her body and only a few weeks to live. In this extremely frank debut, Pierets shares her most intimate memories of Julian and writes about the grief, pain and hopelessness she felt after losing the woman she loved.
‘Sunday’ follows a man from morning till midnight. For 472 pages, we follow every single one of his banal, uninteresting, sometimes embarrassing and frequently irritating thoughts. From this seemingly dull and unlikely premise, Olivier Schrauwen manages to distil a brilliant graphic novel.
Another gorgeous Timmers spectacle, full of captivating details.
De Morgen on 'The Monster Lake'
Bear can’t find his glasses anywhere, and without them he can’t see properly. On his way to Giraffe, Bear sees all kinds of animals that were never there before. He makes Giraffe curious and they set off together to retrace the route. But now with his glasses on (they were on his head all along), Bear can no longer find the deer, the crocodile, the elephant and the flamingo. Might his glasses be broken?
If this doesn’t get you to read, you might as well give up.
De Morgen
Unpopular eleven-year-old Jimmy's luck changes when a new boy arrives in the class. Tristan Ibrahimi is a refugee from Kosovo and Jimmy throws himself into the coaching of his new friend. When the Ibrahimi family receives a deportation letter, Tristan thinks up a plan in which Jimmy will play a crucial role. Born storyteller Lize Spit unfolds the plot of this topical and moving novella in an extremely exciting way.
Another gorgeous Timmers spectacle, full of captivating details.
De Morgen
Four ducks get bored of their little pond. ‘Come on, we’re going to the lake!’ decides one of the four fearlessly. Erik walks at the back of the group and cautiously expresses his doubts. The lake? Doesn’t a terrible monster live there? Unimpressed by Erik’s objections, the group continues undaunted, off on an adventure. In ‘The Monster Lake’, Leo Timmers demonstrates once again what makes him unique as an illustrator.
A literary masterpiece. ‘Morris’ is Moeyaert at his best.
De Standaard
Morris climbs a mountain to fetch his grandmother's dog safely home for the hundredth time when a snowstorm catches them by surprise. Moeyaert depicts Morris, with masterly precision, as a loner who carries sadness within him and at the same time – almost to his own surprise – doesn’t let anyone mess him about. Sebastiaan Van Doninck's illustrations bring warmth and colour into the snow-white cold of the story.
A tale of exceptional beauty. Moving, tender, thoughtful and unique
Ligne Claire
A postman at sea befriends an enormous, ancient whale which carries an entire library inside her belly. When two extremely talented professionals join forces, the result is bound to be impressive. Zidrou’s poetic and playful fable about the importance of inspiring stories is lifted to an even higher level by Judith Vanistendael, whose gorgeous paintings depict the characters and their surroundings with great love and tenderness.
Revolusi. Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
Monumental. A book whose force only increases as you turn its pages. ****
De Standaard
David Van Reybrouck’s ‘Revolusi’ is the first book to go beyond the national perspective and demonstrate the global significance of Indonesia’s struggle for independence. In his familiar stirring and engaged style, and based on countless conversations with witnesses from different countries, David Van Reybrouck once again presents a penetrating reconstruction of a struggle for independence.
A flawless novel with an atmosphere and intensity reminiscent of Graham Swift and Ian McEwan.
Trouw
Peter Terrin takes you with him in this tragic, compelling love story to a crucial episode in the lives of Simon and Carla in the late 1980s. Despite their difference in age, Simon and Carla throw themselves into a passionate relationship, with far-reaching consequences. ‘All the Blue' is a sensitive and sensual novel about friendship and love, and about the delicate quest for an identity of one’s own.
Radiant fiction. This essential book shines a light on personal experiences of migration in ways that illuminate and surprise.
Bernardine Evaristo
In this intriguing mosaic of ten stories Unigwe chronicles the unusual lives of a group of Nigerian immigrants who are making their way in Belgium. They all left their country in the hope of a better life, but the pain of missing Nigeria is a heavy price to pay. Readers will be moved by the realistic, recognisable characters and Unigwe’s empathetic analysis of a migrant community, the situation they fled and the disappointments in their new country.
Spit set the bar high, then launched herself over it with linguistic agility and skill
De Tijd
Leo has been together with her boyfriend Simon for ten years. Their happiness is shattered after he comes home excitedly with a brand-new tattoo behind his ear. Simon’s sudden odd behaviour turns out to be the prelude to a psychotic episode, caused by a bipolar disorder. Spit convincingly portrays the oppressiveness, manoeuvrability and exhaustion resulting from life with a psychotic partner.
Typical Timmers slapstick, with plenty of quirkiness, optical illusions and eye for detail
JaapLeest
The king has seen a dragon and is afraid to go to bed before his three bravest knights have slain it. But where does the dragon hide in the dark? The three knights are undaunted, convinced they will soon find him. But it is not as easy as they had thought. A great adventure in saturated colour.
A master of suspense and of the subtle untangling of painful situations *****
De Standaard
Her mother thinks Bianca is a girl that requires special treatment. Her father thinks she is unmanageable. And Bianca herself? She doesn’t say a word. Until one hot afternoon in August, Billie King, her favourite actress, is sitting in the living room, sipping a cup of tea. With Billie King around, Bianca is brave enough to take a decision. Moeyaert creates an oppressive atmosphere, in which smouldering tensions can erupt any moment.
A broad, shallow, teeming torrent of facts and marvels: Readers tempted to take a dip will be swept irresistibly along.
Kirkus Reviews
All aboard for a fascinating voyage of discovery in and around the water! In ‘Rivers’ Peter Goes travels to the most famous seas, lakes and rivers across Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Goes creates playful and extremely detailed double-page spreads in which text and image form a unified whole.
The subtleness of this poetry continues to affect you, even once you have left the swimming pool of imagination
De Standaard
‘Swimming Pool of Imagination’ is Tom Van de Voorde’s third collection. The poems explicitly reflect the current political and societal issues. He is nothing more than an engaged spectator of ‘military fear’. We might heroically resolve to get involved in the world around us, but to what extent do we succeed?
A crucial book that will stir hearts and minds ****
De Standaard
Stefan Hertmans based the story of ‘The Convert’ on historical facts, and he brings the Middle Ages to life with immense imagination and stylistic ingenuity. This is the story of three religions and a world going through massive change, a story of hope, love and hatred, a novel about a woman who can be certain of one thing: at home the death penalty awaits.
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...
We seldom see so much humour, beauty and linguistic creativity.
Cutting Edge
In this colourful encyclopaedia, children discover the world and learn new words in a playful way. The result is a hefty introductory and comprehensive work, full of dynamic characters and objects, offering a generous sampling of Tom Schamp’s craftsmanship. His illustrations represent a blend of Richard Scarry’s ‘Busy, Busy Town’ and Martin Handford’s ‘Where’s Waldo’.
Every page reveals an eccentric and original cartooning mind at work.
The Comics Journal
Olivier Schrauwen’s grandfather Arsène leaves for the Belgian colony of Congo in 1947, where he and his cousin Roger have planned a hugely ambitious project: a utopia of modernism, right in the middle of the jungle. Sometimes funny, slightly surreal and often beautiful.
Blond quiff, jutting chin, self-confident grin and completely ignorant of any taboos – that’s him, the one and only Cowboy Henk! With their most popular hero, the illustrator Herr Seele and his writer Kamagurka have created a mixture of Mr Clean, Adonis and a hillbilly, entirely in the tradition of the Belgian Surrealists.
A rich, accessible treasure trove of facts and figures
Financial Times
‘Timeline’ is a trip through time, past dinosaurs, Vikings, Aztecs and spaceships. It is an illustrated journey through our world’s culture and events and travels from the Big Bang to the iPod. Peter Goes constructs a continuous line, on which different historical periods make their appearance one by one.
This enthralling novel is a daring, but successful endeavour to paint a probing psychological portrait of a complex personality. At the same time, Hemmerechts develops an intense evocation of an unusual, intriguing relationship, astonishing and sometime provocative in all its directness.
Right before his death in the 1980s, Stefan Hertmans’ grandfather gave his grandson a few notebooks. For years, Hertmans was too afraid to open them – until he finally did and laid bare some unexpected secrets.
Not only stunningly beautiful, it is also very interesting. ****
De Morgen
A boy hears a girl calling him one morning. Is it his sister, the sister in the faded photograph on the wall? This is the beginning of an unforgettable adventure. Jef Aerts and Marit Törnqvisthave created a beautiful book about death. It is emotional without being sentimental, stepping smoothly back and forth between magic and the literalness of childhood.
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.
David is diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, a terminal form of cancer that means he will soon be unable to speak. Judith Vanistendael zooms in on David and the three women who surround him: his wife and his two daughters. A touching and subtle book that compassionately depicts the fruitless struggle to find the meaning of life.
‘Applesauce’ is a refreshing complement to all the picture books in which dads are always heroes. Here you see a father as he really is: he often realises his role of superdad, but occasionally he can be found lazing on the sofa and sometimes he even changes to scary and grumpy, with thunder in his voice and lightening in his hands.
A warm story you can relate to, skilfully written and illustrated
De Bond
Bernie and Flora are a bear and a duck who like the same things and have been friends for years. A series of four books describes their adventures together. The books are an ode to friendship and love, and they also show how both characters need to have respect for each other’s individuality.
Like every year, everyone gathers on the top of the hill. Ant is very happy that it is finally her turn to chair the meeting, in which they will discuss a difficult question. Elephant asks how you know that you love someone.
One big, hilarious pile-up – that’s ‘Bang’, a fabulous picture book story with hardly any words. Animals of all kinds go crashing into each other. They all have their own reasons for not noticing they’re about to smash into the others. But what a happy crash it is! The colourful illustrations make this book a feast for the eye.
One day a stranger offers to make Mr. Renny’s dreams come true: everything he paints will come to life. Then his friend Rose asks if she can buy one of his paintings. The spell has to be broken – and soon! In this story, with a big nod to Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte, Leo Timmers combines a rich imagination with a clear, purified visual language.
Maia and her grandmother have a ball whenever they are together. But then Grandma suddenly falls ill and when she wakes up she has lost her words. Far from the realms of cliché, Tine Mortier and Kaatje Vermeire show how a sharp young girl copes with difficult themes like ageing and death.
Sublime, monumental, virtuoso. This literary non-fiction is more thrilling than a novel.
NRC Handelsblad
Like many Belgians of his generation, David Van Reybrouck knew Congo from stories of the old days. The author begins his gripping account in the 1870s and chronicles the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras, right up to 2010, the fiftieth anniversary of Congolese Independence.
A masterful symbiosis of colour, form and composition
Boekenpauw jury
Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale, ‘The Secret of the Nightingale’s Throat’ is a literary retelling that will appeal to readers of all ages. In the long line of illustrators who have made pictures to accompany Andersen’s tale, few have managed to catch the emperor’s despair as vividly as Carll Cneut.
Lively and engaging... On Black Sisters’ Street is a pleasure to read: fast-paced, lucidly structured and colourful.
Times Literary Supplement
‘On Black Sisters Street’ tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe—and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives.
Fox and Hare live together in the wood, next door to Owl. They love each other and they tease each other and, as befits an inseparable duo, they’re complete opposites. Vanden Heede succeeds in creating unforgettable characters in a fresh and funny style. The story’s so much fun that the readers barely notice the words and sentences are getting longer and longer.
Beautiful illustrations: evocative images with clever ideas
De Leeswelp
Mouse is wrestling with an identity crisis. He’s always comparing himself with others, and sees himself as inferior. He dreams of being another animal. But Mouse learns that the other animals' lives also have their drawbacks. At the end of his journey of discovery, he realises that there’s only one animal he really wants to be: Mouse.
The nameless fifteen-year-old protagonist lives with her parents 'at the end of the world': on a hairpin bend that ends on an unfinished bridge. Drivers are regularly caught unawares by the bend in the road, and crash into the front of the house, where they are nursed back to health.
Viktor, a biologist working for the Ministry of Public Health, has difficulty coming to terms with the death of his wife during a carjacking. Worried about the assumed lack of security at his son Igor’s school, he barricades the two of them in their flat. Extreme care and responsibility gradually turn into pure insanity.
Lighthouse keeper Tijs spends all day looking out at the sea. He’s waiting for his friend Sailor, who has promised to return so they can travel the world together. It’s all Tijs can think about.
‘Waiting for Sailor’ is a book that will long stay with you and where you can turn to whenever you find yourself missing someone.
A world that sizzles with activity and teems with life
De Standaard
In 'In the Shadow of the Ark' Anne Provoost takes her inspiration from the Biblical account of the Flood. Re Jana and her family leave the rising water levels of the marshes for the desert where it is rumoured that the largest vessel of all time is being built. The writer enthrals with a chronicle of quickly changing events in what is nevertheless a calmly developing story, with vivid scenes that appeal strongly to the imagination.
Moeyaert proves without doubt that even a happy childhood can be a goldmine for a writer.
De Volkskrant
Bart Moeyaert is the youngest of seven brothers. His early years in his native city of Bruges were particularly happy and furnished him with an abundance of material for this much-praised autobiographical collection. In the forty-nine stories, humour, warmth and a sense of solidarity are prominent, but between the lines lies a far richer spectrum of emotions.
A rabbit family that you instantly adopt as your own
De Leeswelp
Ricky Rabbit is different from the other rabbits: his right ear droops, while his left ear stands straight up. Whatever he does, the other rabbits make fun of him. In the end, his humour earns him a place in the group as the entertainer.
I am well past fifteen years old, but I am glad that this book has come my way.
Het Parool
Through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old girl, we witness the life of a broken family over the course of three stories. In the first of the three we plunge straight into a fierce family quarrel. All survive intact. But the tone has been set. Bart Moeyaert deals with love in a sensitive and refreshing way, expertly unravelling its complexities while at the same time leaving its mystery intact.
‘The Rose and the Swine’ was inspired by ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and is a tribute to the primal force of the fairy tale. Provoost, a celebrated author for all ages, offers her readers works of the highest literary quality.
‘The Rumours’ evokes a panoramic image of 'la Flandre profonde', delving beneath the shiny veneer into the depths of its corruption and violence. Comprehension of the central storyline is hampered by the permanent tension between truth and lie. All this is presented by Claus in a playful style, as if we were reading not a dramatic allegory but a juicy village chronicle.
'Falling' exhibits the traits of a classic tale of destiny.
Woutertje Pieterse Prize jury
Lucas is spending the summer with his mother in his grandfather’s house as he does every year. This year, however, everything is different: his grandfather died at Christmas and gradually tongues are beginning to wag about his war years. In a sober style and with atmospheric, detailed descriptions and convincing dialogue, Anne Provoost creates an extraordinarily oppressive feel to her novel.
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.
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
One of the landmark European novels of the post-war era
J.M. Coetzee
This Bildungsroman is also a social document about political and social misfortune in Flanders before, during, and after World War II. The novel has continued to be a bestseller for many years and has been translated into numerous languages.
