Fiction

Young Eritrean Hannah arrives in London as a refugee. While the teenager tries to clear a path for herself through Britain’s bureaucratic immigration policy, she recalls memories of her family, torn apart by war. She immerses herself with words, the diary of her belated mother, the work of British poets and authors, and starts exploring her sexual boundaries.

‘The Seers’ is a compelling and powerful novel, exceptionally rich in imagery. In a single paragraph, which Addonia wrote on his iPhone, he disentangles his characters’ psychological and sexual lives by unparalleled means. This is a raw story about love, loss and inexhaustible resilience, colonial traumas, and the true face of Britain’s immigration policy and its impact on young refugees.

The story starts in Paris in the late eighties, where Philippe, a happily married French bourgeois, is suffering from a recurrence of the prophetic visions that have afflicted him since childhood. As the city reels from a spate of terrorist attacks, Philippe turns into a neurotic stalker, increasingly focussed on Eloise, the family’s new au pair. This all-consuming obsession resembles nothing so much as complete sexual infatuation and threatens to destroy his family.

Within this suspenseful, gripping story, 'Listen' provides fascinating portraits of the complacent world of the French upper middle class, the life of an au pair and the machinations of modern art. At the same time, the book is an informed, insightful depiction of Paris that rises far above the usual clichés. Bronwasser’s novel is a literary statement, a calling card for the future and, most importantly, an irresistible read.
 

Olaf’s world is turned upside down when his former girlfriend Hilde tells him she’s seen his best friend W. in Antwerp again after an absence of three years. The news marks the start of thirteen gripping days in which Olaf goes searching for answers. Why did W. disappear and flee to a different life? How well did he actually know W.? Are his memories of their friendship real at all? Through flashbacks we learn how the two boys, and later Hilde as well, became friends. The novel pays tribute to youth and the idealism that goes with it.

‘W.’ is an addictive novel in which Hiemstra displays a great deal of literary talent, presents distinctly layered characters and plays extravagantly with language and composition. The result is labyrinthine prose in which it’s a delight to lose your way. The novel has won various prizes such as the Debutant Prize 2024.

It’s a little after six in the morning on a summer’s day. Nurse Henk van Doorn, 56 years old, wakes up and considers going back to sleep, but nagging thoughts of a conversation he had with a colleague and his irritation with his brother Freek’s attempts to influence his life keep him awake. He thinks of his dog, Schurk, and decides to get out of bed. Henk is a thoughtful man who struggles with his weight and his way of dealing with the world. Other people can make him angry, but he keeps his thoughts to himself. While Henk is out walking Schurk that morning, one thing leads to another as the summer day unfolds.

Kollaard reveals the beauty hiding in small, everyday occurrences. We, the readers, are left expecting the catastrophe that will befall our anti-hero. But the calamity never comes. A sweet, thoughtful man like Henk ultimately deserves some form of happiness - a beautiful outcome for this optimistic and brilliantly-written novel.

At eighteen, Wolf travels as far north as his bank balance will allow, without telling anyone where he is. Six months after his disappearance, his lifeless body is discovered in a forest in northern Sweden. His Moleskine notebook, attached to his body, contains an account of Wolf’s final journey, towards a self-chosen death. Wolf wanted to be a writer; his sister Lara became one. In ‘Wolf’ she looks back on their childhood, on the turbulent months after Wolf’s disappearance and the years after his death. She combines her own story with fragments from Wolf’s diary and with snatches from the almost daily emails their father sent his son while he was missing.

‘Wolf’ is a rock-solid book about grief, and about the power of imagination and the written word: ‘writing back’ to Wolf ultimately proves impossible. With this universal and lacerating story about her own brother, Taveirne leaves not a single reader unmoved.

Salomé Atabong, daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, arrives at a juvenile detention centre to start a six-month sentence for an as-yet-unspecified violent crime. Her thoughts, memories, interactions with fellow detainees and reluctant therapy sessions gradually reveal the confusion, anger and sorrow that swirl within her, fed not just by the casual and sometimes aggressive racism of her provincial hometown, but also by the tug of contending family influences.

"Her experience as a poet shows in her highly precise use of language […] When Salomé describes the circumstances of her detention, the sentences hum with the intoxication of violence." - NRC Handelsblad

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.

Tijssens’ debut novel packs an emotional punch. In just 120 pages, this tale of queerness, loss, and longing unfolds with breathtaking intensity. Already translated into four languages, ‘The Edges’ showcases the poetic and cinematic brilliance of the screenwriter behind ‘Girl’ and ‘Close’, two films by director Lukas Dhont that won awards worldwide.

Ela is a prison guard working on what she calls her 'escape book' — a documentary project about people who managed to evade their fate, drawing on confidential files and sources that others can't access. Then she falls pregnant with her third child, her first daughter, and something shifts. Carrying a girl transports her back: to her father, who died too soon; to her mother, who retreated into books; to all the ways confinement takes hold long before anyone locks a door. Each version of Ela illuminates a different kind of trap: the expectations placed on a woman's body, the weight of a father's early death, the particular loneliness of a mother who is always watching others rather than being seen herself.

Moving effortlessly between the tragicomic and the devastating, Perquin crafts a highly personal debut that announces a powerful new voice in Dutch fiction.

‘WILL’ is a bold, ambitious and multifaceted novel in which no one is spared. Wilfried Wils is an auxiliary policeman in Antwerp at the start of the Second World War. The city is in the grip of violence and distrust. Wilfried does what he can for himself, avoiding paths that are too slippery, he’s the archetypal antihero.

In this gripping novel, Olyslaegers explores the complexities of moral choices during war and the far-reaching impact on individuals and generations. Recently adapted into a Netflix film by Tim Mielants, director of ‘Small Things Like These’.

“I did the right thing. I’ve become successful. I wanted to win for you, mum,” whispers Sagal as she mops up the last drips of sick with her dress. Her mother is an addict, her house a dealer hangout, her bedroom a cannabis farm. Sagal dreams of taking revenge on the white world that shut her out. She decides to become rich – incredibly rich. At just thirty, she owns a marketing company turning millions in profit.

Only a few writers combine such biting clarity with an imposing narrative voice when portraying how class shapes a person’s transition. Alara Adilow is one of them. A Dutch-Somalian poet and novelist, Adilow was named the Netherlands’ most promising literary talent of 2024 by leading newspaper de Volkskrant.

If you have ever been to Antwerp, you have undoubtedly noticed the Orthodox Jewish community in the city. Yet, their lives remain shrouded in mystery. 'Mazel tov' tells the story of young Margot Vanderstraeten who works as a tutor for a Modern Orthodox Jemish family. Her account offers a unique glimpse into a hidden facet of Belgian life.

'Mazel tov' is a compelling and thought-provoking story, written with journalistic precision and wry humour. This insider’s account bridges cultural divides with empathy and insight.

It is the 1960s. Anne grows up with her mother beside a canal in a quiet village in the Morvan. At seventeen, she uses her body as a key to another life, unaware of the risks of being young and female in a world shaped by men. He is an American writer, older, married, with a family back home. Decades later, Anne reads the erotic novel he wrote about their affair and understands, with sudden clarity, that what he described as sport and pastime marked the beginning of everything for her.

‘I Was the Girl’ responds to an unnamed novel readers will recognise as James Salter’s 'A Sport and a Pastime'. Anne Mieke Backer gives voice to the woman behind the myth, reclaiming a canonical text from the inside out — elegant, sharp, and entirely her own.

In a forgotten village somewhere in Flanders, a boy lives with his father and three uncles in his grandmother’s house. They’re an ill-mannered and coarse bunch, unpredictable heavy drinkers. Wallowing at the bottom of the social ladder, their lives are a total mess.

Flanders’ answer to ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, is a coming-of-age story that appeals to many readers because of its sharp humour, vivid realism and deep emotions. It has been translated into 25 languages – including Norwegian, Danish and Finnish – and has sold over 400,000 copies worldwide.

New York, 1966. Thirteen-year-old Lucy Applewhite attends a Catholic girls' school; she and her friends have tickets to a Beatles concert. But when her mother makes a horrifying confession, Lucy’s young life is thrown into disarray: Lucy is the child of an unknown rapist. From that moment on, Lucy clings to her childhood — but the world she is trying to escape refuses to let her go.

Eekhout once again explores the literary liminal realm between magic realism, thriller and reality, trapping readers in the vice-grip perspective of the unreliable narrator. Following her international bestseller ‘Mary’, Anne Eekhout revisits the relationship between fantasy and monstrosity. ‘The Enchantment of Lucy Applewhite’ is an engaging, complex and exceptionally fast-paced novel.

Marie and her sister Georgine, who is eleven years younger, live together in the family home after the death of their parents. Both sisters fall in love with their neighbour Luc Hancq, but he strings them along. He flirts with Marie, but eventually proposes marriage to Georgine. When the sisters discover that he has been two-timing them, they show solidarity for one another and hatch a plan: Hancq is murdered.

While the title hints at a thrilling detective story or a whodunnit, ‘A Revolver Shot’ is so much more than that. It’s a Shakespearean drama, regional novel, gothic novel and naturalistic novel all in one. In Marie, Loveling has created a passionate, complex and intriguing protagonist. ‘A Revolver Shot’ has also been praised for its beautiful language, its atmosphere and tight composition. The novel, a highlight of Loveling’s acclaimed oeuvre, is so well written that it has been captivating readers for over a century.

‘Boiling Point’ brings together seven stories set across time and place, from Algeria in 1961 to Amsterdam in 2061. The title story offers a stark indictment of the genocide in Palestine, while other narratives trace lives shaped by displacement and loss: a woman in rural France haunted by memories of her youth in a Moroccan village; a man who loses the love of his life to nuclear tests authorised by the French state in the Algerian Sahara.

Through a wide cast of characters, the author shows how history’s violence reverberates across generations. The book foregrounds multilingualism and the ways language binds people to places and identies, offering shifting perspectives on colonialism and enduring, fragile human connections.

In twenty powerful short stories, Van de Velde portrays his ‘companions in misery’, people living on the fringes of society, with whom he found himself in psychiatric institutions. His humanity, his command of style, his clarity of mind and his ability to resist sentimentality still effortlessly hold readers in their grip more than fifty years after his stories were first published.

Roger Van de Velde (1925–1970) is the quintessential cult author, still admired by Flemish writers today. His extraordinary life story, combined with his masterful prose, makes him a unique figure in literature. Echoing ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, his stories continue to resonate profoundly, both in Flanders and abroad.

In 2016, Hugo is a celebrated painter whose life has stalled since Loïs, the love of his life, left him. He returns to his grandparents’ estate to investigate the past of his hundred‑year‑old grandfather, Willem Adema, a man with whom he has a complicated relationship. Both are solitary and unlucky in love, yet they stand on opposite sides of history: Willem is tied to Nazism and the fossil fuel industry, while Hugo turns to art and meditation, increasingly estranged from his right‑wing family.

Despite repeated setbacks, Hugo pursues an art project that exposes his grandfather as a war criminal. It marks his artistic comeback, but at the cost of an irreparable family rift. The intimate story of an artist trying to figure out how he feels about a problematic ancestor is interwoven with reflections on the past century. With ‘Nirvana’, Wieringa has written his magnum opus.

Shellfish grows up in a run‑down seaside town in a working‑class single‑parent family, where futures are limited to factory work or the local distribution centre. When they are pushed out of their friend group, Shellfish leaves for the city. With no money, home or safety net, they drift between precarious situations: a sexually abusive landlord, a celebrated reporter who hires them for odd jobs, and a flatshare with self‑styled social justice warriors.

In precise, razor‑sharp prose, De Vries combines cynicism with wit, her style both archaic and associative. This biting coming‑of‑age novel leaves room for humour and hope. When Shellfish returns home, they carry one hard‑won insight: your spirit and freedom are yours alone – how you handle what fate throws at you is up to you.