Joost Zwagerman

Joost Zwagerman (1963-2015) got his first break with 'Gimmick!' (1989), a novel about the racy, hedonistic Amsterdam art scene of the 1980s.

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He caused quite a stir with his next book, Vals licht (Bad Light, 1991), in which he tells of the fatal love of a student for a prostitute. Other novels are De buitenvrouw (The Mistress, 1994), Chaos en rumoer (Chaos and Commotion, 1997) and Zes sterren (Six Stars, 2002). Zwagerman has also published several poetry collections, and has published several collections of essays - notably on pop culture and the visual arts.

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Joost Zwagerman

The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories

In 2005 Joost Zwagerman gathered the very best short stories by Dutch and Flemish writers in a monumental anthology numbering almost 1,600 pages. Unlike English speaking countries and elsewhere, the Netherlands had never held the short story in very high regard. Zwagerman’s intention was to give ‘literature’s stepchild’ the attention it deserved. The anthology was a runaway success. A year later Zwagerman published another collection of sixty ‘long short stories’, or novellas.

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