Two Blankets, Three Sheets does for the beleaguered political asylum seeker stuck in legal limbo what Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 did for the hapless soldier trapped in a military at war…Translated from the Dutch into nimble and conversational English by Jonathan Reeder…it is a tale for and of our time."—Rayyan Al-Shawaf, Los Angeles Review of BooksBased on the author’s true story, this is the account of Iraqi refugee Samir, who spends nine years...

"This is the E8," my father said. "It runs from London to Moscow."For a million years people have been travelling throughout Europe, from the mysterious homo antecessor who left his footprints on the coast of England to travellers on the motorways of today. Under every footstep lies an older one, under every paved road a donkey trail or wagon rut, under every footpath the prints of a hunter or his prey.And yet the long, nation-spa...

After nine years in a Dutch asylum center, an Iraqi refugee tries to start a new life as a European citizen and discovers that to make friends in the western world, you need a dog.After nine years in a Dutch asylum center, Samir finally has the chance to start his new life as a European citizen. But it’s a full-time occupation for him to discover what integration really means. Happily, this distracts him from what is happening in his native land, Iraq, and from Led...

**“Revelatory and poignant” stories of suppression and freedom, told through the artists trying to make music in the dangerous time of Stalin's purges (The Guardian).“Krielaars testifies to a deep knowledge of Russia. Told with the voice of a great master” — Pieter Waterdrinker, author of The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street“Highly readable. . . Transport[s] us through a rich mix of anecdotal and historical material” — Financial Times**When...

" I am the nameless crew member who died on January 27, 1597." So reports the Dutch narrator of Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost from his icy grave on the Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemyla, separating what is known today as the Barents and Kara Seas in Russia. But when this expedition set out to find a " northeast passage" from Europe to China, the landmasses blocking such a route were unknown. While the expedition failed, the narrator becomes a sentient part of the landscape...

Even readers unfamiliar with The Last Poets’ historic significance as building blocks of the hip-hop and rap movement, will instantly find this novel a compelling read.The Last Poets were self-proclaimed prophets of ‘hope and change’. The band was formed in 1968 against an incendiary backdrop of the black power movement and murders of Martin Luther King, Kennedy and Malcolm X. Today their socio-political lyrics have a renewed sense of urgency, rallying loud and cle...

In 1932, Isay Rottenberg, a Jewish paper merchant, bought a cigar factory in Germany: Deutsche Zigarren-Werke. When his competitors, supported by Nazi authorities, tried to shut it down, the headstrong entrepreneur refused to give up the fight.Isay Rottenberg was born into a large Jewish family in Russian Poland in 1889 and grew up in Lodz. He left for Berlin at the age of eighteen to escape military service, moving again in 1917 to Amsterdam on the occasion of his...

**A New Scientist Best Popular Science Book of 2023How seeing Earth through the eyes of an astronaut brings new wonder and meaning to life on our planet.**One stifling summer night, the poet and journalist Marjolijn van Heemstra lay awake, unable to sleep—like so many of us feeling anxious and alienated, deeply exhausted yet restless. Amid the suffocating stream of daily obligations, the clamor of notifications and increasingly dismal headlines, she longed for a wa...

This spellbinding and intimate novel explores the burden of legacy as a young woman wrestles with discoveries that contradict her great-uncle’s supposed heroism during World War II.D says that a name always fits in the end, that a name is like a leather shoe that forms itself to the foot.But in my mind, it’s the other way around: a person grows into his name.Marjolijn van Heemstra has heard about her great-uncle’s heroism for as lo...

When Stalin came to power, making music became a dangerous endeavour. Russian composers now had to create work that served the socialist state, and all artistic production was scrutinized for potential subversion.The Sound of Utopia offers a vivid portrait of Soviet musicians and composers struggling to create art in this climate of terror. Some successfully toed the ideological line, diluting their work in the process; others ended up facing the Gulag or even death. With p...

**A New Scientist Best Popular Science Book of 2023How seeing Earth through the eyes of an astronaut brings new wonder and meaning to life on our planet.**One stifling summer night, the poet and journalist Marjolijn van Heemstra lay awake, unable to sleep—like so many of us feeling anxious and alienated, deeply exhausted yet restless. Amid the suffocating stream of daily obligations, the clamor of notifications and increasingly dismal headlines, she longed for a wa...

Siem Sigerius is a beloved, brilliant professor of mathematics with a promising future in politics. His family—including a loving wife, two gorgeous, intelligent stepdaughters, and a successful future son-in-law—and carefully appointed home in the bucolic countryside complete the portrait of a comfortable, morally upright household. But there are elements of Siem's past that threaten to upend the peace and stability that he has achieved, and when he stumbles upon a deception that's painful...