Skip to main content

Nonfiction selection autumn 2024

As the new season brings an array of intriguing nonfiction titles from Flanders, we proudly presents a diverse selection of works exploring philosophy, history, social and political issues, and travel. 

We’re also delighted to introduce two new tags to help you browse our website:

Collage nonfiction autumn 2024

'In the Footsteps of the Burgundians' by Bart Van Loo

Cover Stoute schoenen

Following his bestseller ‘The Burgundians’, of which over 375,000 copies were sold across Europe, Bart Van Loo has written another fascinating journey about our distant past. In the final part of his diptych, ‘In the Footsteps of the Burgundians’, the author brings the Late Middle Ages back to life in inimitable fashion.

‘Ghosts of Budapest’ by Chris Ceustermans

Budapest

During the Covid-19 crisis, Chris Ceustermans was beset by an existential emptiness that prompted musings about his student days in Leuven in the late 1980s, when he often spent time in the company of a Hungarian called Yuri. A dissident journalist for Radio Free Europe, Yuri had fled Hungary and was staying in the Collegium Hungaricum, where in unexplained circumstances he resorted to suicide. Yuri was of the same generation as Viktor Orbán, in those days an important voice in the liberal resistance to communism. Thirty years later, Ceustermans decided to travel to Budapest in search of answers to his questions.

‘Out of Reach’ by Lotte Lola Vermeer

Buiten bereik

This book is the total opposite of the famous ‘Voyage autour de ma chambre’ by Xavier de Maistre, although initially Lotte Lola Vermeer explores the world without leaving her room. Google Street View enables her to travel cheaply and tirelessly at her desk, since modern technology allows us to go absolutely everywhere, from dazzling Alaska to icy Siberia. That at least is the idea on which the author was relying. On one of her many digital journeys, however, she discovered that Street View ends abruptly at apparently random places.

‘The Theory of the 1 or 2’ by Ish Ait Hamou

De theorie van de 1 of 2

In this unguarded, open, relatable but also confrontational essay, Ish Ait Hamou seeks explanations and answers to life-defining questions from the starting point of personal experience. He focuses first on his own Moroccan community, but the theory of ‘the 1 or 2’ that he develops is at once unique and universal, making his essay potentially important to any reader.

‘Know Yourself’ by Tinneke Beeckman

Ken jezelf

The starting point for each of the pieces in this book is a philosophical question. They are not chosen at random but arise out of a desire for self-knowledge. With each question the author found that, after brief reflection, her first spontaneous answer proved inadequate. What she initially thought she knew turned out to be no longer valid.

‘Pride’ by Martha Claeys

Trots

Pride may seem like something for people with big egos, for individuals who are easily offended, and for braggarts who have no boundaries on social media. Those who are proud tend to put themselves too much in the spotlight. But pride also underlies emancipation and can be a powerful weapon in protest. With pride, you can better appreciate your own worth. More space for certain forms of pride may be the key to social justice.  

Oct 14th, 2024