Books

Authors

Directory of Translators

Grants Awarded

Grants

Discover

About the Foundation

Catalogues

Contact

An selection of highlights, by genre

Discover Dutch authors, by genre

Download our publications

Discover our titles by genre

Genres

Books & Authors

Find a translator in database of accredited literary translators.

How to get accredited as a literary translator

Sign Up as a Translator

Translators

Translation Database

Find out all possibilities for financial support

An overview of recently awarded translation grants

Our work and our purpose

About translation and travel grants

Frequently Asked Questions

Our activities and projects

Programs

Who we are

Departments and staff

Our latest news

What's happening

Get in touch

Discover who we are and what we do

Manik Sarkar

As a young boy, Rensing grows interested in the question of how to end an animal’s life as skilfully as possible. One day, a bird hits the window of his classroom. Their teacher snaps the bird’s neck to put it out of its misery. The students are shocked – how could he do such a thing? A little later, Rensing says, in what he believes to be a quite normal contribution to the conversation, ‘He should have just smashed its brains in from behind with a little hammer.’ From that moment on he is seen as an outsider. He graduates from his butchery course with top marks and the time has come for his parents to pass on the reins of the family business. He needs a woman by his side to help keep things going, and his parents have someone in mind, Jacomine, whom he ends up asking out on a date. They become involved, though they aren’t in love. Jacomine starts working behind the counter and before long knows the locals better than her fiancé does. Then Rensing finds himself facing two setbacks: his father dies suddenly and the town gets a supermarket. He is the owner of the shop now, but the business is barely breaking even. Rensing believes in the quality of his pricy meat and tries to restructure the business. After taking out a loan he finds himself saddled with a heavy debt, which leads to discord between him and Jacomine. And then a second supermarket opens nearby. ‘For you, there are only two people in this world: you and not-you,’ Jacomine tells him one day, before packing her bags. The times are changing: Rensing begins stocking meat substitutes to cater to flexitarians but he continues to struggle financially, and now he’s on his own. ‘Real loneliness comes from within and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing that can make it any better,’ he reflects. That thought ultimately leads to an act through which he becomes one with his beloved animals.Rights 2Seas AgencyMarleen Seegers marleen.seegers@2seasagency.com

A brilliant debut about an endearingly ambitious butcher. Sarker’s prose is impressive, and he is a skilled storyteller: building suspense, raising the stakes (cliffhangers!), letting the reader read between the lines and drawing wholly believable characters.

A classic rise-and-fall narrative. Love of animals, bloodlust, craftsmanship, eroticism – in the book’s finest moments, all of these come together.

Sarkar is an unflinching storyteller. You won’t find a single comma out of place. A book to read and reread, again, and again and again.

Book

Fiction

Debut novel about a butcher’s son devoted to his job and blind to the world around him

Asset

Assets

Ossenkop

In this superbly written debut, we meet a butcher who lives for his craft – he wants to provide the best meat from animals who have had a good life and are slaughtered as humanely as possible. After finishing butchery college, he will be taking over his parents’ business. He has a brilliant future ahead of him.

Oxhead

Mathijs Deen

Like other legendary fictional detectives, Liewe Cupido is a man of few words. It’s not just about keeping his cards close to his chest – he’d rather keep quiet about painful things, even to himself. That has everything to do with the skeletons from his own closet, especially his father’s mysterious death by drowning when Cupido was a teenager, which left him bereft and adrift – and which he still feels a sense of guilt about. The Rescuer is about a cold case: a body is found off the coast of Britain, a tugboat captain who went missing twenty years earlier after a shipwreck that drew both German and Dutch rescue services. At the time, neither were able to bring him home. The ingredients of the story are vintage Deen: the legal no man’s land of the Wadden Islands (Cupido is with the German police, yet grew up on the Dutch island of Texel) and the stunning descriptions of this harsh, stormy landscape, which make the reader yearn to be out there, at the mercy of the elements. Deen reveals how this decades-old murder turns people’s lives upside down – especially within the community of gruff rescue workers on the German island of Norderney. Cupido is assisted by young detective Xander Rimbach, who combines a disarming insecurity with a remarkable intuition.The Rescuer is a story about pride, poison, grief, parenthood and faith. The mounting suspense reaches fever pitch when Michael Waagmann appears on the scene, an old rescue worker who turns out to be extremely manipulative. The book culminates in a gripping finale that shakes even the unflappable Cupido to his core.RightsMare VerlagSchultze-Kossack AgencyOn behalf of Mare VerlagAnnette Wolfannette.wolf@mp-litagency.com

As usual, Deen’s narrative voice is assured and wide-ranging, deftly alternating perspectives without being overly fixated on his detective protagonist, with a keen sense of the idiosyncrasies of the Frisian world between Texel and Flensburg.

A lot of crime fiction also makes some kind of statement about the society in which the crimes are being committed. But few authors manage to be as subtle and non-didactic about it as Mathijs Deen in this book.

A unique contribution to the Dutch thriller genre – one made by a journalist who never would have ventured into writing crime fiction if it hadn’t been for his German publisher twisting his arm.

What secrets do the heroes of the sea carry with them?

De Redder

In Deen’s sublime third Wadden Sea thriller, a mystery unfolds against a spectacular backdrop. The psychological depth and literary brilliance of Deen’s works are reminiscent of the great Scandinavian authors in the genre. longside the murder case – below the surface of the water, if you will – he constructs a riveting psychological drama.

The Rescuer

Marijke Schermer

The protagonist is Nicola, a microbiologist. As a scientist, she looks at the world through a microscope and keeps herself in the background. That serves her well in her work doing research on bacteria, but real relationships with other people need more than that. A partner wants to know about your feelings; friends want to be supported and support you in turn; children crave a sense of warmth and familiarity. Nicola’s closed-off nature has long been a sticking point in her relationship. But when her girlfriend of seven years breaks up with her, Nicola is stunned. Nicola hasn’t told her that her application for a research grant has been turned down and for her girlfriend, this is the last straw – if you love someone, you share that kind of news with them. Newly single and professionally adrift, Nicola decides to simply observe. She continues her research into bacteria in her own time and tampers with some of the results. She low-key stalks a man named Louis; they end up getting involved, but she doesn’t tell him much about herself. Letting herself into his house before they’ve even had a conversation, falsifying data – she figures it’s alright to cut some corners every now and then.This is what makes the novel so exciting. As a reader, you’re in Nicola’s head, but you soon realise she’s an unreliable narrator. Does she have an accurate view of herself? Should we believe her? In the Eye is a well-crafted psychological thriller. Schermer’s prose often draws comparisons to Rachel Cusk and Zadie Smith, who similarly blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. Gradually Nicola realises she can’t just be an observer. Life demands engagement. Her daughter Marie, a climate activist, demonstrates this when she glues herself to the highway in protest. The novel builds to a powerful dénouement: Nicola finally opens up about her past, making her new relationship a genuine fresh start.RightsCossee International AgencyStella Rieckrieck@cossee.com

Marijke Schermer describes 
emotions in painstaking detail. She 
observes, dissects, plumbs emotional 
and psychological depths – and keeps 
on looking until she’s found the 
perfect words, whittling her prose 
down to taut, spare observations.

In the Eye is that rare thing – a novel you can read and reread while reflecting on your own life and relationships. Cheaper than therapy – and perhaps more effective.

Keen psychological insight in prose that will remain with you for days.

An excellent novel, packed with emotional truth and an elegantly turned narrative.

A scientist is forced to put all her cards on the table in this psychological page-turner

In het oog

Relationships are a careful balancing act: what should you say and what is best kept to yourself? Should you share everything with your partner or is it acceptable to keep some things secret? That is the key question in acclaimed author Marijke Schermer’s riveting fourth novel.

In the Eye

Rinske Bouwman

She looks back on her childhood: climbing volcanoes, riding horses, a little brother she loves to play with, a father who is a ‘cloud-chaser’ with the ability to conjure rain. It’s a world full of magic. The warm animal fur that little Sarlag could sink her hands into contrasts with the frozen products in the grocery store, which she moulds into fantastical shapes before putting them back into the freezers. Why does she live so far away from her family? The reason is revealed halfway through the book: her brother died in a car accident. Her father, who was behind the wheel, refused to speak of what happened and even stopped talking altogether. It’s a universal story: people who are incapable of dealing with their grief and instead run away from it or change who they are completely. Sarlag closes herself off from her surroundings: ‘I want to be alone, but preferably with other people around me.’ But one way or another, grief will find its way to the surface. Her nails become hard and gnarled and long white hair starts growing on her stomach and back – a layer of down that keeps getting thicker. Is this really happening? Slowly but surely, Sarlag begins to change into a yak… She leaves the house and runs all the way out of the city, because as a yak she can’t possibly stay where she isBouwman’s tone is dark and light at the same time. Gripping and moving, this highly original novel about grief and trauma is an ode to the imagination – a wonderful combination of the Dutch down-to-earth mentality and the magic of old Mongolian stories.Rights Shared Stories Hayo Deinumhayo@sharedstories.nl

‘A bold, inventive novel, though the 
writer’s restraint almost obfuscates 
just how daring it is.

It’s impressive how Bouwman builds 
the kind of suspense that makes 
you want to keep reading, both 
through the way she breadcrumbs 
information and through her vivid, 
visceral prose.

A wildly original debut.

A wholly original novel about how grief can alienate and transform us. Bouwman is a keen observer who confidently dissects complex emotions with levity and compassion. A unique debut.

A woman undergoes a magical metamorphosis into a yak in a captivating story about loss and grief

Een soort eelt

Sarlag is a 26-year-old woman working in the 
freezer section of a grocery store somewhere in the 
middle of the Netherlands. She seems completely 
ordinary. With a cool, detached gaze, she observes 
her surroundings and thinks about yaks, those loyal 
animals with their white fur that live on the steppes 
of Mongolia, where she grew up.

Hard Skin

Author

Privacy statement

post@letterenfonds.nl