‘Falling is Like Flying’ and ‘Movies Showing Nowhere’ mentioned as Books of the Year

Movies Showing Nowhere by Yorick Goldewijk, is a mysterious novel about a motherless 12-year old girl named Cato, who keeps herself entertained with kung films, her pet rabbit and her photography. Then one afternoon Cate receives a mysterious invitation to an abandoned cinema, and everything changes. “This is one of those special “children’s” books that is so good it should be read by everybody,” says the Times, also calling Movies Showing Nowhere “breathtakingly good.”

The translation rights of Movies Showing Nowhere have been sold to twelve countries. Apart from that, the book will be adapted for the big screen in the Netherlands. In 2022, Goldewijk received for Movies Showing Nowhere a Gouden Griffel, one of the most prestigious prizes in the Netherlands for the best children’s book of the year.

Manon Uphoff’s Falling is Like Flying is an autobiographical story of a childhood spent in the shadow of a domineering, abusive father. Layer by layer, with anecdotes and atmospheric portraits, Uphoff constructs the hall of mirrors of her youth. She takes us back to a house full of children — her half-sisters, brothers, little sister Libby and herself (as MM or ‘the undersigned’). In 2020, Uphoff received the Charlotte Köhler Prijs for Falling is like Flying.

“Ablaze with specificity and unique material, this novel-cum-memoir lovingly conjures up the textures of a lost childhood world and lays them in powerful contrast to the brutality at the heart of the parent-child relationship,” says reviewer Claire Lowdon in the Times Literary Supplement.