Irene van der Linde

Writer and historian Irene van der Linde (b. 1963) and documentary photographer Nicole Segers (b. 1960) have been working together for some twenty years. Their work has been published in renowned weekly newspapers in The Netherlands and Belgium. It has been shown in De Kunsthal in Rotterdam, at festivals in The Netherlands, France and Poland and in a collaborative project with Rem Koolhaas in Brussels.

Non-Fiction

Their main focus is the influence of the new European borders on people’s lives. They published Het einde van Europa (The End of Europe, 2004) – the French translation was nominated for the Prix du Livre Européen – and Het veer van Istanbul (The Istanbul Ferry, 2010). Blood and Honey is the final part of this trilogy about the Balkans. It was voted best text/photo book 2021 at the Dutch Photo Book Prize.

More Irene van der Linde

Irene van der Linde

Blood and Honey

In 1937, the British writer and journalist Rebecca West travelled through the Balkans. Everywhere she looked she found traces of the meaning of its name, derived from the Turkish: ‘bal’ – honey, ‘kan’ – blood. More than eighty years, and many wars and attempts at reconciliation later, Dutch writer Irene van der Linde and photographer Nicole Segers set off in her footsteps, visiting the seven countries that now form the Balkans. They search for the meanings of the new borders in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro.

Part ofNon-Fiction