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  • Cover Problemski Hotel
    Cover Problemski Hotel
    Problemski Hotel
    An extremely fascinating book in which the everyday lives of asylum seekers is told in an unparalleled fashion
    De Standaard

    The narrator, Bipul Masli, sketches an intriguing picture of life in an asylum centre. He describes the daily routine with detached irony. His tireless attempts to gain recognition as a refugee are both comic and touching.

  • Cover Collected Poems
    Cover Collected Poems
    Collected Poems
    Possibly the greatest Flemish poet of the 20th century. High time for a rediscovery
    De Standaard

    In a time when competing upheavals and –isms came successively at break-neck pace, Minne searched for and found his own voice, which made no attempts at pathos, sentimentality or exaggerated optimism in progress. With its inimitable blend of minimalism and irony, Minne’s poetry was remarkable, accessible and subversive right from the outset.

  • Cover The Queen of Cuddles
    Cover The Queen of Cuddles
    The Queen of Cuddles
    A feast for the eyes, and an intelligently composed life lesson for both child and parent
    Het Belang van Limburg

    A little princess loves cuddling, but her mother, Queen Mummy, never has any time for her. She is too busy receiving important visitors. And so the princess goes in search of the Queen of Cuddles. Along the way, she meets various queens who do have time for her and with each of them she has some lovely moments.

  • Cover Poppy Seed
    Cover Poppy Seed
    Poppy Seed
    Sober language, restraint, observational talent and the ability to tell a good story: Joseph Pearce has it all.
    NRC Handelsblad

    Gisèle remains a mystery throughout. Joseph Pearce shows everything she does, exposes her every thought. And yet... It gradually becomes clear that Gisèle makes things unnecessarily difficult for herself and for others.

  • Cover Miroirs
    Cover Miroirs
    Miroirs. Poems since 1946
    Everything proves that the work of Christine D’haen is unique in Dutch-language literature
    Jury Report Anna Bijns Prize

    It is certain that the oeuvre of Christine D’haen will be read by different generations for many years ahead. This dense and highbrow poetry asks much from its readers, but in return they enjoy broad vistas that invite reflections on life and culture.

  • Cover Memoirs of a Leopard
    Cover Memoirs of a Leopard
    Memoirs of a Leopard
    An intoxicating, sensory gem of a novel
    NBD Biblion

    Verhelst writes this story of an inspired passion in highly poetic, but also glowing, compelling and incisive prose, with a strongly physical wealth of images, a super-sensitive and sensual explicitness. This creates a troubled, but fascinating blurring of the boundaries between reality and imagination, as well as reality and memory.

  • Cover The Plague
    Cover The Plague
    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.

  • Cover - Waiting for Sailor
    Cover - Waiting for Sailor
    Waiting for Sailor
    Longing powerfully reduced to its essence
    De Leeswelp

    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.

  • Cover The Leopard's Dance
    Cover The Leopard's Dance
    The Leopard's Dance
    Travel writing doesn’t get much better than this.
    New York Times Book Review

    All the problems of post-colonial Africa seem to rage there in exaggerated form. Ten years after her highly praised 'Back to the Congo', Lieve Joris was brave enough to return during a particularly precarious moment in Congolese history.

  • Cover In the Shadow of the Ark
    Cover In the Shadow of the Ark
    In the Shadow of the Ark
    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.

  • Cover Next Year in Berchem
    Cover Next Year in Berchem
    Next Year in Berchem
    The evocative power of language, together with Pleysier’s masterful arrangement of words and sentences, combine to make this a literary jewel.
    De Telegraaf

    Pleysier is a master at giving voice to that great and painful silence of the generations. He does this without using any great emphasis, so that the reader feels he is a guest in the house, and, like the narrator, looks forward to being invited to Berchem again next year.

     

  • Cover Mijn Tweede Huid
    Cover Mijn Tweede Huid
    My Fellow Skin
    A sparkling novel with a thunderous effect, a Flemish song of truth and semblance
    Vrij Nederland

    Mortier writes with great powers of suggestion. So many things in this book, although remaining hidden, are made as clear as day.

    ‘My Fellow Skin’ is ultimately about loss. Anton loses not only his love, but also his youth, the protection of his parents and the old house in the village, and is left desolate.

  • Cover Affairs of the Heart
    Cover Affairs of the Heart
    Affairs of the Heart
    Van Bastelaere provokes, menaces and seduces, curses and sings, but ceaselessly knows to fascinate his reader, to tangle him in his web of words
    Ons Erfdeel

    ‘Affairs of the Heart’ is generally acknowledged as Van Bastelaere's best and richest work to date. In this collection, the heart appears as an empty signifier which is accorded another meaning in every poem and is shown as a cultural construction.

  • Cover Complete Poems
    Cover Complete Poems
    Complete poems
    The Flemish Rainer Maria Rilke

    Gilliams’ sixty-eight poems and his entire body of work are part of the painful and obsessive effort to uncover and preserve his true self. The ultimate goal of his endeavors was to create a “lyrical autobiography”, a still portrait in the sea of life.

  • Cover Brothers
    Cover Brothers
    Brothers
    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.

  • 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 - Tonguecat
    Cover - Tonguecat
    Tonguecat
    A display of fireworks so sensual you can taste them.
    Gouden Uil jury

    Perfect order always degenerates into chaos, and revolutions into hell. Peter Verhelst describes a city falling apart and descending into violence. ‘Tonguecat’ is a real literary tour de force, a visionary story about today’s urban society and about revolutions.

  • Cover Ricky
    Cover Ricky
    Ricky
    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. 

  • Cover Land of Promise
    Cover Land of Promise
    Land of Promise
    Only one word comes to mind: a masterpiece.
    Le Soir

    When Joseph Pearce was fourteen his father told him he was not an Englishman but from Germany and of Jewish origin. Twenty-five years later, Pearce decided to seek out his Jewish relatives. With the story of his own odyssey, which takes him to blood relatives on four continents, Pearce makes the tragedy of the twentieth century painfully palpable.

  • Cover It's Love We Don't Understand
    20,000 copies sold
    Cover It's Love We Don't Understand
    20,000 copies sold
    It's Love We Don't Understand
    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.

  • Cover Language Without Me
    Cover Language Without Me
    Language Without Me
    More than a tribute to a loved one and a poet: a sincere work by a sensitive and powerful writer
    NRC Handelsblad

    The author uses De Coninck’s poems as the vehicle to tell his story; with them she is able to describe the biographical background and the intimacy of their shared life, while retaining the balance she seeks. Within this poetic space she makes clear what Herman de Coninck was – and is – to her.

  • Cover The Poems
    Cover The Poems
    The poems
    His poems seem so easy and so obvious, but their core is the sense of being alone in a silent world
    Hugo Brems

    A constant in Herman de Coninck's poems is the urge to bring poetry closer to everyday reality without adopting the pose of a distant observer. In his poems, he often takes a familiar situation as the point of departure, things like an autumn walk or a birthday party. He is a poet of understatement, who counters sentimentality with ironic humour.

  • Cover The Phoenix
    Cover The Phoenix
    The Phoenix
    Claes’ ingenuity conceals the fact that he has cast his tale in the form of a thriller - a convincing and exciting thriller
    De Volkskrant

    ‘The Phoenix’ is a historical detective story in the tradition of Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’. It takes place in Florence in 1494, and the leading character is one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance, Count Pico della Mirandola, known as the Phoenix.

  • Cover Intercities
    Cover Intercities
    Intercities
    The great charm of this book lies in its explosive mix of opinion and storytelling.
    El Pais

    The result is a beautiful balance between intellectual understanding and personal impressions. His great strength is his ability to keep his eyes open in all circumstances and to surprise himself with the realization that ‘travelling often turns out to be a process of finding what you weren’t looking for’.

  • Cover Toast
    Cover Toast
    Toast (Tox/Soap/Web)
    Hard, pleasantly crude and more topical than ever. His stories are on fast forward without the brakes on.
    De Standaard over 'Web'

    Mennes depicts young characters who resort to extreme measures in an attempt to deal with the emptiness of their lives. ‘Toast’ offers a heart-wrenching and impressive portrait of a Lost Generation.

  • Cover From Bruges With Love
    Cover From Bruges With Love
    From Bruges with Love
    Aspe’s characters are very complex, his plot excellent.
    Vrij Nederland

    ‘From Bruges with Love’ is the third instalment in the popular thriller series around Inspector Van In. By touching on issues such as paedophilia, corruption and blackmail, the narrative provides a critique of the cover-ups that have rocked Belgian politics.

  • Cover The Rose and the Swine
    Cover The Rose and the Swine
    The Rose and the Swine
    A masterpiece of the art of language
    De Standaard

    ‘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.

  • Three Sisters in London
    Three Sisters in London will one day form the exquisite prologue to the inevitable Collected Works of Eric de Kuyper.
    De Stem

    During World War I, Eric de Kuyper’s grandfather’s position with the railways took him and his family to London. The family’s three daughters, who were then in their adolescence, never returned to London. They gave this gleaming period of their lives a special place in the stories they often told on family occasions. De Kuyper, who was born during World War II, has collected these stories in a captivating book.

  • Cover The Midas Murders
    Cover The Midas Murders
    The Midas Murders
    A particularly complex plot that intrigues, surprises and fascinates until the very last page
    De Morgen

    ‘The Midas Murders’ is the second in the popular crime series around the eccentric Inspector Pieter Van In. The title refers to King Midas, the Greek mythological figure who had the ability to turn everything he touched into gold. Aspe demonstrates that in both ancient Greece and present-day Belgium profiteering can lead to tragedy.

  • Cover - The Rumours
    Cover - The Rumours
    The Rumours
    The text radiates a delight in writing
    De Morgen

    ‘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.

  • Cover The Power of Fire
    Cover The Power of Fire
    The Power of Fire
    Mendes measures up to Ludlum and Clavell.
    Haagsche Courant

    An accurate, well-researched depiction of the extreme political tensions in the Middle East in the twentieth century. Against this historical backdrop, Mendes steers his story to a spectacular climax.

  • Cover 'Horses are Pigs too'
    Cover 'Horses are Pigs too'
    Horses are Pigs too
    Stylistically sharp from beginning to end, a tour de force throughout
    De Groene Amsterdammer

    Eduard Bottelaer is a forty-year-old actor who doesn’t expect much from life any more. That is, until he meets the young artist Helena. When she sets off for New York, leaving Eduard behind, she gives him a special task. Eduard is hopelessly in love and becomes obsessed by the bizarre challenge, which lands him in the most unexpected situations.

  • Cover - High Key
    Cover - High Key
    High Key
    Lively and full of surprises
    De Groene Amsterdammer

    'High Key' is a postmodern novel, a collection of text types: monologues, dances and stories. Hoste tries to create a new reality via the imagination and techniques of association. It can be read as an incantation or a magic spell.

  • Cover Bare Hands
    Cover Bare Hands
    Bare Hands
    There cannot be many writers as tough and sensitive as Bart Moeyaert.
    NRC Handelsblad

    A master of creating an oppressive atmosphere, Moeyaert succeeds in making his readers sense everything. There’s no air, there’s no escape, just an inevitable chain of events. In haunting and poetic prose, Bart Moeyaert displays his razor-sharp observation of the human psyche and the dangers of prejudice.

  • Cover To Blackbird Creek
    Cover To Blackbird Creek
    To Blackbird Creek
    Hertmans looks at the world through a microscope
    Leipziger Zeitung

    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.

  • Cover Falling
    Cover Falling
    Falling
    '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.

  • Cover - The Yellow River Is Freezed Over
    Cover - The Yellow River Is Freezed Over
    The Yellow River Is Freezed Over
    More beautiful and more moving prose has not appeared this year. A gem.
    Vrij Nederland

    This book 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.

  • Cover A Longing for Inconsolability
    Cover A Longing for Inconsolability
    A Longing for Inconsolability
    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.

  • Cover Elly Dark Blue
    Cover Elly Dark Blue
    Elly Dark Blue
    A timeless, enchanting and colourful love story
    Pluizuit

    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. 

  • Cover 'Christmas and Other Love Stories'
    Cover 'Christmas and Other Love Stories'
    Christmas and Other Love Stories
    Excellent book
    NBD Biblion

    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.

  • Cover - The Charred Alphabet
    Cover - The Charred Alphabet
    The Charred Alphabet
    A masterpiece
    Het Nieuwsblad

    ‘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.

  • Cover Cardboard Boxes
    Cover Cardboard Boxes
    Cardboard Boxes
    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.

  • Cover Café De Raaf Is Still Closed
    Cover Café De Raaf Is Still Closed
    Café De Raaf Is Still Closed
    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. 

  • Cover - White is always nice
    Cover - White is always nice
    White is Always Nice
    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.

  • Cover - Aunt Jeannot’s Hat
    Cover - Aunt Jeannot’s Hat
    Aunt Jeannot’s Hat
    A magnificent book
    Ons Erfdeel

    ‘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.

  • 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 Tender Destruction
    Cover A Tender Destruction
    A Tender Destruction
    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.