When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'.After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. 'A double bed and a duvet', advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once eng...

WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE'A wonderful novel. Wise and generous to a fault of all our human failings and frailties' Lloyd Jones, author of Mister PipA Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She says her name is Emilie. She has left her husband, having confessed to an affair.In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help him trace her. They boar...

A twisty, slow-burn mystery set in Paris and the Netherlands that has become an international bestseller, now in English for the first time.In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris—even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art program in the Netherlands. The city, the language, and the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she'd been reckoning with in school. Even as her ...

It is announced that Jesus Christ is to visit Belgium in a few weeks time, on its national day, the 21st of July. Coincidentally, our narrator's mother dies and his marriage ends. Feeling very low, and fluctuating between resentment, irony and cynicism, he reports on the events and on the behaviour of his compatriots. The authorities squabble about how to receive Christ. They find an eleven-year-old girl in the asylum seekers' centre to act as Christ's Aramaic interpreter (Arabic, Aramaic,...

From the bestselling author of Talking to Alaska comes a hilarious, heart-warming summer adventure. For fans of Ross Welford and Helen Rutter.THE TIMES CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK'This funny, award-winning novel by Dutch writer Woltz is original and touching — and has two wonderfully memorable characters…’ Sally Morris, Daily MailIt’s the first day of the holidays and Sam is roaming the island of T...

An impressively entertaining tale about the frailty of human civilisation by the leading Flemish writer Peter Verhelst, now for the first time in English.Warning: This story is narrated by a gorilla. He is plucked from the jungle. He learns to chat and passes the ultimate test: a cocktail party. Eventually he is moved to an amusement park, where he acts in a play about the history of civilisation. But as the gorilla becomes increasingly aware of human frailties, he must choose betw...

Join Quill the hedgehog on a bedtime adventure to rediscover the magic of quiet moments."Long, long ago it was so busy.Nobody had time to stop for a moment.Everything and everyone had to be higher, faster,further, bigger, prettier, more!"Thus begins Grandpa Hedgehog's story of the Rush Era. A time not so different from our own, where everyone was constantly on the move and no one had time to stop for a moment, even to care for the fores...

Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary AwardAn acquitted sex offender struggles to adjust to life after prison in this daring and deeply unsettling debut novel of psychological suspense—from a Dutch criminal psychologistJonathan has returned from prison to his largely deserted, run-down neighborhood. He has returned to his mother, to his dog, to filling the hot days with walks on the dunes and caring for the fish he keeps in an aq...

A tense, thrilling, morally murky read, set in Nazi-occupied Antwerp and inspired by the author's own family history of collaboration during WWIIIt is 1941, and Antwerp is in the grip of Nazi occupation. Young policeman Wilfried Wils has no intention of being a hero - but war has a way of catching up with people. When his idealistic best friend draws him into the growing resistance movement, and an SS commander tries to force him into collaborating, Wilfried's loya...

International Dublin Literary Award–winning Gerbrand Bakker gives voice to the visceral power of family ties in a novel brimming with Knausgaardian detailWhen his wife tells him she is pregnant, Cornelis packs his bags and boards a plane—a day later he is dead. Now grown, Simon roams the barbershop his father left him, honing razors and polishing mirrors in a shop marked FERMÉ. He sees his customers one by one, massaging scalps and shaving throats in an intimate, p...

Mr. Coats is freezing cold.No matter how many heaters he turns on, how many blankets he sleeps under at night, or how many layers he wears, he can simply never get warm.Being this cold all the time is lonely. And loneliness is a chilly feeling. Mr. Coats thinks he'll be alone in the cold forever, but he's wrong. There's someone out there just like him.

In his first English-language collection, Dutch-Moroccan poet Mustafa Stitou marks his position as one of the most important poets of his generation. Two Half Faces collects work from across Stitou’s career as he grapples with a vital narrative of cultural friction and determines his position in a changing reality. Absurdity and seriousness go hand in hand in Stitou’s work; the anecdotal combines with the irreverent and the sublime to form a vibrant tension. Stitou brilliantly par...