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Göteborg 2027

Adriaan van Dis

When Eefje is diagnosed with a terminal illness, she signs herself into a hospice to receive the care she needs – and have a place to host her admirer. They undertake their last journey together, back in time: to their trips around the world, to their traumatic youths, to their early romances. Told in great detail, for the first time, as death awaits. The conversations reveal why they – two people who had to grieve too soon, who grew up in broken homes and who shrouded themselves in a persistent air of mystery – were always meant for each other.Everything for the trip bundles romance, grief and self-portrait into one. Van Dis’s choppy style and brief, fragmented chapters offer an accurate portrayal of the end of life. He writes about the beauty of a romance kept alive by its limitations – never stagnant, forever a work in progress. At the same time, he shows the systematic erasing of Eefje as a woman and director and how the men she managed rose to fame rather than her.<ul><li>Themes: unconventional love, mourning, literature and poetry, sexual fluidity, the invisibility of female artists</li><li>75.000 copies sold so far</li><li>#1 bestseller upon publication</li><li>An instant topic of conversation in all major Dutch media outlets</li></ul>

A sublime novel, not only about “love and lies” but also about decline and death.

Van Dis creates a monument to a love that existed outside the confines of the ordinary.

That complexity, captured by Van Dis in so few and such simple words, is what makes this novel so good.

A powerful, poetic novel written with a palpable urgency. A declaration of love to a temperamental woman who was unable to choose.

Book

A poetic novel about a secret romance that lasted nearly forty years

Asset

Assets

Hayo Deinum

For almost forty years, Adriaan van Dis kept the love of his life a secret. Now, following her death, he revives her in this poetic novel about an extraordinary three-way relationship. They meet in the 80s on the set of a TV and literature programme – she, Eefje, is the director; he is the presenter. They fall in love, but Eefje stays with ‘the Other’, with a capital O, as the narrator insists on calling him.

Everything for the Trip

Teddy Tops

In an attempt to give some coherence to her identity, she begins to rewrite the lives of her grandmothers Levi and Jo. What if they had met each other instead of their spouses? What if they had been free to live their lives as they wished?Grandma Levi bears her own unbearable loss: one of a ten-year-old Jewish girl who, one morning, arrived at her school to find the yard deserted. She spent the war living with anyone who would give her a place to hide. After liberation, she regularly returned to the bridge where she had last seen her mother. Maybe, just maybe, she’d find her there.Compelling in its quiet intensity, Tops’s novel consists of two parts – Aboveground and Underground – in which time becomes fluid and the boundaries between memory, figment of imagination and longing blur. The novel’s seven chapters take us through each passing minute of the car accident: as the first-person narrator and her parents sink deeper, we experience moments of extraordinary silence and concentration.<ul><li>A debut that is rare in its literary maturity and highly acclaimed by the Dutch press</li><li>Themes: intergenerational trauma, Jewish experience of WWII, mourning, female identity, the unreliable narrator</li><li>160 pages — dense, poetic and exceptionally ripe for multiple readings</li></ul>

Tops combines a compact writing style with fluid prose, distilling an incredible amount of life into 157 pages.

What if women in post-war Europe had been free to choose their own path? Teddy Tops’s heartfelt novel explores that possibility.

Ernaux, and then some.

A moving and inventive debut novel about the search for missing origins

Martijn Prins

Egelskop

The anonymous first-person narrator in Teddy Tops’s debut novel is the sole survivor of a car crash that kills her parents, leaving her – just four years old – with only a handful of memories that she can’t be sure are true. Each time she replays them in her mind, they appear in a different setting or feature different cast members. How can she know where she really comes from?

Arrowhead

Gabriëlle Terpstra

Geller is born into a dysfunctional family. Mother can’t cope, father is rarely seen at home and disappears after the birth of her younger brother Eliot, who has autism. She is raised by her emotionally stunted aunt. Geller is a failure, or at least that’s what she tells herself: she’s too fat, stupid, ugly. That’s why nobody’s remotely interested in her. Smoking, sex, alcohol and drugs become an attempt to change that narrative.The novel unfolds as a lively two-plot monologue. The first thread begins with Geller&#039;s birth, while the other opens with her as a young woman who realises her dead-end life needs fixing. Terpstra takes an almost nonchalant approach, writing with brutal honesty and a cold, sometimes laconic tone that unsettles as much as it moves. More than anything, this is a portrait of one woman&#039;s courageous search for a better life.<ul><li>A candid book that is as raw as it is full of hope</li><li>A new, young voice in Frisian literature</li><li>Semi-autobiographical: Terpstra draws on her own experiences with addiction and loss</li></ul>

A debut to remember – an instant classic. Reminiscent of Tove Ditlevsen's celebrated Copenhagen Trilogy: a literary adventure through a young woman's life that tests your pain threshold.

Terpstra maintains just the right distance to give an almost unfeeling description of Geller's experiences, allowing the reader to form their own opinion.

A subtle yet profound portrayal of a young woman's life — remarkably lucid, objective and, ultimately, hopeful.

This debut novel by a young Frisian female author is raw, poignant and shamelessly honest – but above all, full of hope

Hille Faber

Geller

Gabriëlle Terpstra is a rising star in Frisian literature. In a humorous, compassionate and crisp style, she tells a story about being born to addicts, childhood poverty, self-medication and sex.

Joke van Vliet

In 25 short chapters, Joke van Vliet builds her portrait slowly, moving between the present squalor of Daan&#039;s flat and the life that led her here. A daughter abandoned by her mother at a young age. A woman of considerable talent who made choices that cannot be undone. A mother herself, whose relationship with her own daughter may carry the same fault lines.The closer we get to the heart of Daan&#039;s guilt, the more her hallucinatory perspective blurs the line between what happened and what she can bear to remember. Van Vliet writes with a precise, cinematic eye, rendering Daan&#039;s world entirely through touch, sound, and sensation.The result is deeply immersive — the reader feels the cold floor, the disorientation, the slow unravelling — and as Daan&#039;s past comes into focus, the book tips further into the surreal without ever losing its grip. Questions of motherhood and talent, beauty and sacrifice, run beneath every scene like a current. A taut and deeply unsettling debut.<ul><li>Gripping and harrowing novel about intergenerational trauma and the expectations of motherhood</li><li>Powerfully cinematographic and fragmented writing</li><li>Shortlisted for the BNG Literatuurprijs 2025</li></ul>

At its core, the book is driven by the struggles of a woman with two irreconcilable forces: those of mother and artist.

An impressive work of literature by an author who should be more widely read.

A staggering story.

Impressive debut novel about a woman’s reflection on her tattered life

Niets is echt gebeurd

Daan is blind. She has barricaded herself in her flat, crawling through the filth and the dark, waiting for the police to come. She has done something terrible — something she cannot undo — and she knows it is only a matter of time. We know this from the very first page. What we don't know is how she got here.

Nothing Really Happened

New Dutch Fiction

Spring 2025

Autumn 2024

Spring 2024

Autumn 2023

Spring 2023

Autumn 2022

Spring 2022

Autumn 2021

Rens Bod

Bod takes readers on a fascinating journey to discover what sets us apart from other animals – and what we have in common. The dividing line is marked by the uniquely human power of recursion: thinking about thinking, and then thinking about that.Wolves reach decisions democratically. Ants can count to twenty. Bees and ants use forms of majority rule. And plants – not just animals – communicate with each other. But humans and animals differ on one crucial matter: the ability to reflect on thoughts. ‘The fact that we’re able to endlessly search for patterns in patterns,’ says Rens Bod, ‘is what I call unlimited recursion. And it appears to be unique to humans.’Bod explores the limits of our knowledge through the lens of multiple scientific disciplines, searching for answers that not only help us to understand who we are, but also appreciate what connects us to other living beings. Rens Bod gathers numerous – supposedly unique – human qualities and researches whether these differences and similarities originate from a much deeper pattern. At the end of this groundbreaking book, the author offers a crystal-clear answer to what connects people, animals and other life forms as well as what continues to set them apart.<ul><li>English translation of the book is in the pipeline</li><li>Successful author whose book The Forgotten Sciences, discussing the history of social sciences, was released in seven countries.</li><li>Should beings other than humans have rights? This book will change your thinking.</li></ul>

A most enthralling of encyclopaedias. Over 300 pages, Rens Bod discusses what could be the complete range of similarities and differences between people and other living beings.

Non-Fiction

A profound journey of discovery to find the essence of humans and other animals and life forms.

Lotte de Boer

Het unieke dier. Op zoek naar het specifiek menselijke

Which underlying patters explain both the shared and unique characteristics of people and other life forms? That is the question at the heart of The Unique Animal. A question that, despite centuries of philosophical and scientific debate, has never before been researched with quite such rigour.

The Unique Animal

Annejet van der Zijl

In this masterly dual biography, Annejet van der Zijl describes not only their captivating careers but also the historical relationship between Japan and the West. Set at a time when Japan was completely isolated from the outside world, the story appears so far-fetched as to be the product of invention. Just one Dutch trading post, situated on the miniscule artificial island of Dejima off Nagasaki, was authorised to trade with the country. In 1823, the young German army physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, serving under the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, arrives on the island. He falls in love with the concubine Sonogi, with whom he has a daughter: Oine. Seven years later, the shogunate expels Von Siebold from Japan, tearing him away from the country and his beloved family. Upon returning to Europe, Franz von Siebold becomes the world’s authority on Japan. His daughter Oine Kusumoto, meanwhile, follows in her father’s footsteps and qualifies as the first female doctor in Japanese history. Father and daughter did everything in their power to see each other again. But when Japan was forced to open its ports in 1854, their reunion takes a completely unexpected course. The Floating World is the captivating and often emotional dual biography of an exceptional father and his equally unique daughter.<ul><li>This book shows the scale of the influence of Japanese civilisation on Western culture then and now.</li><li>A film-like account of a unique story from history</li><li>An American Princess - The Many Lives of Allene Tew became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and was selected as one of the best books of 2019 by The Guardian contributor Hilary Mantel.</li><li>Annejet van der Zijl is one of the Netherlands’ bestselling authors. Her books have been awarded many prizes, translated and adapted for the screen.</li><li>The English translation of her most famous work, Sonny Boy, titled The Boy Between Worlds, achieved international acclaim. </li></ul>

Annejet van der Zijl is the uncrowned queen of literary non-fiction.

A high-powered and striking dual biography.

Van der Zijl has been a master storyteller for over 25 years [...] a magnificent composition.

A great and balanced book.

Van der Zijl delivers a gripping account of the period, its people and the roles they were expected to play.

Written with dramatic verve and cinematographic flair.

A captivating dual biography about the incredible lives of a European doctor and his Japanese daughter in the nineteenth century.

Elco Lenstra

De zwevende wereld. De verbonden levens van Franz von Siebold en Kusumoto Oine

Kusumoto Ine, the first female doctor in Japan to practise Western medicine, is a household name in her country. Her father, Franz von Siebold – a domineering German serving in the Dutch colony in Japan and one of the few Westerners to experience the land of the rising sun – enjoys the same status in the West.

The Floating World: A Dual Biography of Franz von Siebold and Kusumoto Oine

Ellen Neslo

Paulina (1768-1861) was born into slavery on a sugar plantation along the Suriname River.  These are turbulent times during which enslaved Africans flee to the safety of the country’s hinterland, where they gather in Maroon communities. Paulina is a house slave who works and lives in the home of the plantation owner. It is here that she meets the man who would become her partner for life: Klaas van der Meer, a Dutch carpenter who has moved to Suriname to escape the stirrings of revolution in the Netherlands. Paulina and Klaas have three children. Klaas realises that they are not his own, but the plantation owner’s. In this bizar world, he makes several transactions to purchase Paulina’s and his children’s freedom, buying them first from the owner and then from the Dutch state. The couple go on to live together in Paramaribo, but never marry. When Klaas passes away, former slave Paulina acquires ownership of various house slaves, while her son even becomes a plantation owner. This biography, in some ways a tale of reversed fortunes, highlights how the system kept people of colour locked in forever. The Treasure of Freedom lays bare the ties between independence and ambition in a complex colonial society. Can emancipation exist without reproducing oppressive structures? Paulina’s life showcases the many nuances of colonial society.<ul><li>This book offers a reflection on the past while displaying with intense accuracy how that past reaches into the present.</li><li>Neslo’s engaging narrative style immerses the reader in history.</li><li>This book sheds light on the volatility of the long term development of slavery.</li></ul>

In recounting this one single life, Neslo validates many more stories.

The book’s layered and ethically complex account stems from the author’s duality as a historian and descendant of slavery. Paulina is not presented as a hero, but as a woman who shifts between the possibilities and limitations of her time.

A forthright and fascinating contribution to public discourse on slavery, identity and post-colonial heritage.

De schat van de Vrijheid

The Treasure of Freedom is a true story. As historian Ellen Neslo scrutinises her own family history, she presents an in-depth and evocative description of Suriname’s colonial past under Dutch rule. * This book is a compassionate attempt at reconstructing the life of one of her ancestors, Paulina.

The Treasure of Freedom

Michel Krielaars

Michel Krielaars’ in-depth exploration of Russia takes him across and along the Volga, the soul of the country, the source of ideas and myths that have moulded modern Russia: an imperial power that has never been able to accept the 1992 collapse of the Soviet Union.Drawing on a myriad of accounts from local people, Krielaars reveals the past origins of today’s Russia and the number of historical parallels with Putin’s ongoing reign of terror.But as this biography attempts to understand the country at a deeper level, it is also simply an  exciting tale of the huge Volga river. It offers evocative descriptions of Ivan the Terrible’s purges. Draped in black habits and with severed dogs’ heads attached to their saddles, Ivan’s state police carried out terror raids on horseback, sacking and raping the noble classes that they sought to control.River of Blood is not only a fascinating story of Russia’s violent history, but it also helps to understand the current state of geopolitics. Krielaars paints a picture of a broken people. One of his main conclusions is that Russia refuses to come to terms with its past – Russians suffer from illusions of grandeur coupled with an inferiority complex. The author’s takeaways go far in explaining and understanding the problems of Putin’s totalitarian Russia.<ul><li>Krielaars’ latest book tells the story of the country’s origins, its national identity and its political mythology.</li><li>As a former correspondent and authority on Russia, Krielaars is uniquely placed to comment on the state of the country.</li></ul>

Press reviews of his previous book The Sound of Utopia

Through Stalin’s cold winter, the masterly Krielaars manages to find the faint echoes of something song-like, emerging from the silence, calling out for glasnost.

Krielaars gives a colourful account of modern Russia and possesses a profound knowledge of the country’s culture.

Ten cradle-to-grave pen-portraits of Stalin’s musicians, told with bantering brio… Krielaars has done an admirable job rescuing his lesser-known subjects from obscurity.

Krielaars reveals the bloody chapters of Russia’s history and how their effects extend into the present

Stella Rieck

Rivier van bloed: een cultuurgeschiedenis van de Wolga

Of late Michel Krielaar, an authority on Russia, felt the country he thought he knew was gradually slipping away from him. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he felt compelled to return to the past to find answers. Twelve years ago, Krielaars travelled to the source of the Volga, following the 3,500-kilometre course of the river to the Caspian Sea. He recently made the journey again.

River of Blood: A Cultural History of the Volga

Dutch Non-Fiction

Yorick Goldewijk

“Sometimes, you wake up and immediately sense that something’s not quite right. You don’t know how you know; you just do. It’s as certain as the sunlight shining through the window.”The sounds of the war with the North have echoed through Abel’s life ever since he can remember. But this morning, he wakes to silence. After walking downstairs, he is surprised to find his mother is a deer and his dad is a dog. The same fate has befallen everyone else, it seems. There are no people left. And while Abel can still talk to his parents that morning, they become wilder and wilder as the day draws on. Noticing that all of his neighbours have turned into animals, too, Abel chooses to run away from the dangerous beasts that now consider him prey.As he attempts to locate another human, he enters a supermarket and finds a letter. But can he trust what it says? He manages to connect with Kat, a fifteen-year-old girl from the North. Bound together by the same lot, the pair of sworn enemies head to the coast in search of answers. This gruelling journey sees them not only fight against the outside world, but against each other’s preconceptions.Throughout, Yorick Goldewijk keeps the reader firmly in suspense: why have only these two souls been spared? What has happened exactly? And what does it mean to be human?“I have felt hate in every fibre in my body. Hate is something that animals DEFINITELY do not experience. But I don’t want to end on a negative note. So here’s a quick sum for you (I don’t give a damn if it doesn’t make any sense): if you deduct all hate from all love, you’ll always have something left over. Those leftovers are us. That’s what I think.”<ul><li>Amazing, original and full-of-intrigue book for readers aged 12+</li><li>Critically acclaimed by the media</li><li>Yorick Goldewijk won the Gouden Griffel award</li><li>Goldewijk’s book Movies Showing Nowhere was named The Times Children’s Book of the Year</li></ul>

Albatros is as weird and wonderful as it is merciless, asking tough yet pertinent questions about war, guilt and blame, the meaning of being human while launching a heartfelt plea for the power of gentleness.

Goldewijk’s ambitious project, showcasing his unique voice, is proof he means business. [...] Goldewijk conjures a new magic in children’s literature.

Goldewijk set the bar high with this book, but he’s truly outdone himself. He shrewdly investigates complex human emotions such as blame and hate on the one hand and forgiveness and kindness on the other. [...] A heartfelt tribute to humanity.

A dazzling tribute to the power of imagination. [...] Alienating yet utterly bewitching.

Children's books

A captivating and exciting YA book. An awe-inspiring page-turner packed with emotion.

Sophie Mulder

Albatros

It’s a rather odd sort of feeling, starting the day as a human while everyone around you is an animal. In Albatross, Yorick Goldewijk goes on a bold thought experiment to find out what would happen if everyone – bar just one soul – woke up as an animal.

Albatross

Mohana van den Kroonenberg

“Only weird people believe in gnomes,” says Dad to Kai. “Are we weird?”Kai and his parents are making their way to aunty Fee’s house in the forest. Kai is desperate not to go: he has to stay in that horrible place for six whole weeks. His parents tell him he’ll be fine. All those things he’s been reading in fairy tales – witches on brooms, gingerbread houses – aren’t real. Once Kai arrives and watches his parents drive off, all he wants is to go back home!But soon after that, Kai finds a red pointy hat in the forest. And that pointy hat can’t belong to anyone but a gnome. He’s called Peer. Kai doesn’t believe in him – despite staring him in the face. “Gnomes can sense when you don’t believe in them,” says auntie Fee.“I don’t believe in cousins or nephews,” says Peer to Kai.Kai’s parents are horrified by the odd friendship developing between their son and the gnome. Their son believes in gnomes! Has he lost his mind in that forest?Mohana van den Kroonenberg carefully builds an arc of suspense, sharing several telling descriptions of Kai, his aunty Fee and his parents. Kai’s rather haphazard arrival in the forest has strong undertones of Hansel and Gretel. You can’t help but feel you’ve landed in a very spooky fairy tale, made all the more compelling by Karst-Janneke Rogaar’s expressive illustrations.<ul><li>Peer is part of the popular Tijgerlezen series for young readers</li><li>Thrilling and amazing</li><li>The story is enhanced by fantastic illustrations</li></ul>

Fairy tales don’t exist. Neither do gnomes. But they do if you believe in them. That, in a nutshell, is Peer’s message. Captivating in its ambiguity, Peer is a fantastic introduction to the power of fiction.

Peer is a tribute to the power of imagination and friendship, enhanced by Karst-Janneke Rogaar’s fabulously rustic illustrations. You can almost hear the leaves rustling in the forest of pen and brushstrokes.

Clever and amusing story for younger readers.

Lucienne van der Leije

Peer

For six long weeks, Kai must stay with his aunt who lives in a frightening forest. How will he cope? A chance encounter with gnome Peer marks the beginning of an unforgettable summer. An original and gripping story for young readers about an unlikely friendship and the boundary between imagination and reality.

Pear

Annet Schaap

Eleven-year-old Eliza has six brothers. Her mother died while giving birth to the youngest of the six, Krekel. One day, five of her brothers disappear. They’re said to have drowned, but Eliza isn’t convinced. She tattoos their names onto her leg and goes in search of them, joined by her only surviving sibling: her youngest brother, Krekel, who just happens to be the most fearful of the lot.Overcoming setback after setback, Eliza and Krekel continue their search until the White Cliffs at the other side of the ocean. The book charts the gruelling journey that requires all the bravery and strength of the unflappable and resourceful sister and her scaredy-cat brother.Annet Schaap has created yet another fantasy world in Krekel. Told with abundant narrative flair and beautifully illustrated, her book borrows several characters from Lampie while incorporating a brand-new protagonist and plot. Schaap’s story is enriched by the multi-perspective narrative, giving readers insight into the worlds of humans and others. This imaginative story about desire, courage, perseverance and sacrifice is loosely based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen. A fairy tale for all ages.<ul><li>The long-awaited new release by Annet Schaap</li><li>Beautiful black-and-white illustrations</li><li>Lampie has been translated into over 30 languages</li><li>International bestseller</li><li>Winner of all major children’s book awards</li></ul>

Children’s books are either pleasant or exciting or moving. Schaap’s duo of voluminous read-aloud novels showcases her mastery of all three at the same time. Krekel is a phenomenal story and has to be one of 2025’s best books for kids and their parents alike.

Schaap’s talent for storytelling is bewitching. Her imagination is boundless, her style is flawless.

Mermaids, pirates and fierce fights for freedom combine in a fast-paced fairytale.

Following the multi-award-winning debut Lampie, expectations were high for Annet Schaap’s second novel. The wait has been worth it; Krekel is off the scale. Overwhelming and moving. A gem of a book.

Every reader will be enchanted by this all-ages fairy tale.

Krekel

After an eight-year break, Annet Schaap returns with her long-awaited second book set in the world of Lampie: her multi-award-winning debut from 2017 that quickly earned the title of classic. A moving and imaginative story; a fairy tale for all ages.

Cricket

Marc ter Horst

Karst-Janneke Rogaar

Stan’s father has a case of ‘imperatyphus’: he’s fallen victim to a flood of compelling slogans and instructions. He’s lost his job because of it. Stan’s mother can’t take it anymore and moves out.Stan thinks his dad needs an ad blocker for the real world. He explores the problem as part of a school project, setting up an initiative with a classmate to bring down the number of ads on the high street and get rid of marketing lies. The initiative exceeds all expectations as it soon becomes clear that everyone is suffering from cognitive overload.Marc ter Horst exposes the amount of marketing we’re exposed to and what happens when you take everything literally. The book critiques modern marketing as much as it explores language. Dit wil je lezen! is a topical children’s book about fake news, advertising and the consequences of information overload.<ul><li>an entertaining, language-focused book full of interesting facts</li><li>informational fiction about the world of advertising, fake news and marketing strategies</li><li>Marc ter Horst demystifies a complex topic for young readers</li></ul>

Dit wil je lezen! is as entertaining as it is educational, written by an author who doesn’t patronise young readers.

Dit wil je lezen! is a playful, fast-paced book about an original and relevant topic.

Marvellously absurd story containing legions of original language.

Uta Matten

Dit wil je lezen!

Order now! Stay back! You don’t want to miss this! Any sign Stan’s father sees, he takes literally. And it’s starting to become a problem: he can’t stop ordering products online, and he stands so far from the till at the supermarket that he never gets served. 
Something’s got to give. Stan comes up with an ingenious solution.

Must Read!

Spring 2021

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With these catalogues, we proudly present a curated selection of books published in the Netherlands. Each book featured has been chosen for its artistic excellence and commercial success. It is distributed free of charge to foreign publishers and editors.

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