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In 2008, her first non-fiction book This Is Not a Homeless Person was published and subsequently nominated for the Jan Hanlo Essay Prize. In 2014, her second novel Boy was awarded the BNG Literature Prize and translated into Danish, German, English, Italian, Croatian and Turkish. More novels followed — Quarantine in 2015, Grime in 2017 and Vanishing Point in 2020.

Wytske Versteeg

As a first-year student, Wytske Versteeg was sexually assaulted twice within a short period of time. These were neither her first nor her last encounters with sexual violence. Vanishing Point describes the aftermath of these experiences, which destroyed from a young age a trust in the world that is typically taken for granted.It is the story of a fight not only against pain, shame and alienation, but against the limitations of language itself: ‘We all know what the vanishing point of language looks like: we know it from television. When something really terrible happens, the sound is taken away and we see the main character’s experiences in silence, and often jerky, slowed down as though there’s something wrong with time.’Memories of sexual abuse are often unchronological and fragmentary, particularly when such abuse took place at a young age. This makes them perturbingly questionable, an ambiguity which often goes lost in the stories society tells itself about violence. Can we think beyond narrow categories of victimhood? Is it even possible to discern clearly where sexual violence begins? How can one tell an honest story about violence instead of a fairy-tale narrative? Versteeg charts how the notion of ‘trauma’ changed from a primarily bodily experience to a wound in the psyche that does not seem to heal, a sense of self harmed beyond repair. And yet, psychological trauma is deeply physical as well. How can you become somebody again after having been repeatedly treated as ‘any body’?With these questions at its core, Vanishing Point is a book for all who have experienced the alienation pain can bring. In finding words for this darkness, and the realisation that there is no way of unknowing what you know, this book is an act of hope. If trauma alienates, it may also bring a more acute awareness of the transient and fragile beauty of the world. As the book concludes: ‘All this can disappear at any time. All this is here right now.’

The human condition is explored through the imagination in many different ways in her work. She uses this not so much for the one-dimensional believability of a story but in her ambition to convey to the reader the vulnerability and complexity of all human endeavour; the drama that lies within fallibility.

With her third novel, Wytske Versteeg proves to be one of the best authors of her generation in terms of composition, subtlety, power of expression and definitely style. Perhaps quite simply the best.

Book

Non-Fiction

Asset

Assets

Verdwijnpunt

‘As a writer, I go in search of uncomfortable stories, things that don’t want to be told.’ In this case, the story that defies telling is Versteeg’s own. More than just a story, it is a philosophical quest — how to live after violent acts have been committed against the body? How to find a language for this experience? In this naked, mesmerising account, Versteeg explores the many facets of pain and the challenges of recovery.

Vanishing Point

‘A major new talent.’ That was how NRC Handelsblad described Wytske Versteeg on the evidence of her debut novel. In Boy, her second book and winner of the BNG Literatuurprijs, the young writer confirms her status as a bold and highly individual voice. Her protagonist, Boy’s mother, is not immediately overcome by grief in the aftermath of her son’s death but is deter­mined to find out exactly what happened. How did Boy die? Was he murdered? Did he take his own life? The police believe his death was suicide but his mother is not so sure.Every little detail of the story seems to crowd in on the mother. She mulls over every aspect of how her son’s body was discovered by someone out walking their dog on the beach. She homes in on the ‘deep-purple smock of a dress’ worn by the policewoman who comes to break the news and the ‘jarring tone’ of her voice. Tuning into details seems to offer her a way of drowning out the naked truth of what has happened.Her efforts to unravel the course of events lead her to an unsettling confronta­tion with the class bully and expose her to a torrent of abuse from a girl from the same class. Eventually she sets her sights on the drama teacher, who was preparing her pupils for a performance of Richard III at the time of Boy’s death. This somehow appears to have triggered the fateful events at the beach, but no one is able or willing to fill in the details.Hannah, the drama teacher, has left the teaching profession and moved to a remote village in Bulgaria. Boy’s mother follows her there; she poses as a voluntary worker who can help with the gardening but her true purpose is revenge. Yet as soon as she arrives at her destination, her resolve crumbles. Although Hannah leaves her stranded for hours, she cannot feel angry. In the end there is no violence, just the dark and harrowing story of a woman who sought to steer the group dynamics of her class and instead precipitated a tragedy.

Two novels in, we can safely conclude that estrangement between family members is a theme that Versteeg favours. In Boy she once again demonstrates a meticulous eye for the fine detail of human relationships.

In less than 200 pages – and against the backdrop of Shakespeare’s 'Richard III' – Versteeg raises profound questions which give 'Boy' a timeless character, while doubts about background and origin, innocence and betrayal, love and self-interest take on an original and contemporary form in her narrative.

Fiction

Boy grows up as the only child of his adoptive parents. Chubby and dark-skinned, he is ruthlessly bullied at school, but at home he says nothing about what he is going through, only that he has pains in his stomach. After a class outing to the beach, he does not return. His lifeless body is later discovered washed up on the sand.

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