Singel Publishers Rights Guide - Spring 2022

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Singel Publishers Rights Guide Spring 2022 Singel Publishers

Foreign rights:

Weteringschans 259 1017 XJ Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone: + 31 (0)20 760 72 10 www.singeluitgeverijen.nl
Jolijn Spooren | j spooren@singeluitgeverijen.nl Martijn Prins | m.prins@singeluitgeverijen.nl Luciënne van der Leije | l.van.der.leije@singeluitgeverijen.nl

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

Monterosso mon amour

Carmen is married to a boring man and has sacrificed her own ambitions for his second rate career. Once she ran a feminist bookstore; now she organises literary evenings for the local library. No longer the prettiest girl in the class, she is now just a childless librarian. Like Emma Bovary, Carmen reads novels that express the depth of human emotion in order to escape reality.

Inspired by a reading by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer at her library, Carmen decides to go on vacation to Monterosso, a brief trip that turns into a longer stay due to the onset of the covid plopped down into the world of a real novel and then finally make her own and

claims to have found her first love Antonio, and Carmen grows attached to an orphan boy named Oronzo. Stranded in a seaside resort during the outbreak of a contagious disease and confronted with misunderstandings and the reality, her story reads like a more life affirming Death in Venice On her flight back to the Netherlands, Carmen finds herself sitting next to Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and confides in him about her experiences in Monterosso. She tells him what an unremarkable life she and how she wishes she could read a book about a life like hers. The author promises to write down her story, literally proving how seemingly small events are worth reading about.

Novella | 96 pages | 26,000 words | April 2022 Rights sold: German (Piper), Spanish (Acantilado), Catalan (Acantilado)

The press on Grand Hotel Europa:

Pfeijffer captures the zeitgeist ***** NRC Handelsblad (NL)

A powerful and intriguing novel that one doe asily. La Stampa (IT)

A lively, clever and sometimes malicious book. Suddeutsche Zeitung (DE)

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (1968) writes novels, stories, poems, columns, essays, theatre plays and lyrics. He has lived and worked in Genoa for many years. He won the Libris Literature prize in 2014 for his novel La Superba. He is highly praised for both his poetry and his novels His novel Grand Hotel Europa sold 320,000 copies in the Netherlands, and will be translated into 22 languages

English sample available

Hotlist
New novella by the author of the international bestseller Grand Hotel Europa • Print run of 550,000 copies, National Book Week Gift of 2022
© Stephan Vanfleteren

Hotlist

new novel by internationally acclaimed author

Anna Enquist Demolition

Composer Alice Augustus, only child from a coldhearted family, is granted the assignment to compose an anniversary concert for the Royal Symphony Orchestra. She is at the top of her game and her artistic ambitions drive her to what could become her magnum opus. She is considered a significant composer in her field, but hardly anyone knows that she makes a lot of money writing advertising jingles under a pseudonym. What does not help either, is the fact she had a hard childhood and tumultuous love life. Meanwhile, time is running out. Alice Augustus is nearly forty years old and her desire to have a child is starting to take over.

Sloop is a novel about art and love, creating and birthing a human life in all its poignant vulnerability. With an insistent rhythm, Enquist sweeps you along toward an unexpected climax. Following in the footsteps of great writers like Simone de Beauvoir, Hella S. Haasse and Virginia Woolf, Demolition is a contemporary take on a time old subject compelling and convincing.

Novel | 296 pages | 68,000 words | December 2021 Rights sold: German (Luchterhand), French (Actes Sud) Options: English (world), Hebrew

On Sloop:

Demolition is a return to form, a tautly s, with music, literature and psychoanalysis all closely intertwined. Leeuwarder Courant

Enquist understands the struggle; she knows longing and lack. Nederlands Dagblad

Anna Enquist (1945), psychoanalyst and a classically trained pianist, is loved writers. She is the author of bestselling novels The Secret, The Masterpiece, The Ice Carriers, Counterpoint and Quartet. been published in 18 languages. Her bestselling novel The Homecoming will be published by Amazon Crossing in April 2022.

• 15,000 copies sold, in the bestseller list for several weeks • • Compelling
English sample available soon © Bianca Sistermans

Hotlist

• Nominated for the European Union Prize for Literature 2022

• Western masculinity called into question in bloodcurdling novel about hunting

• Winner of the Sabam Culture Prize, shortlisted for the Confituur Bookstore Prize, and longlisted for the Boon Literature Prize

Gaea Schoeters Trophy

Hunter White lives for the big game hunt. An immensely wealthy American share trader, he goes to Africa to shoot a rhinoceros, the last of the Big Five he has yet to bag. The hunt gives him, more than anything else, the feeling of being alive. Moreover, he believes trophy hunting creates not just job opportunities but an income the local population needs to combat poaching. When he discovers, after a disappointing rhinoceros hunt, that there is expedition takes a sinister turn. In Trophy, Schoeters takes us into the twisted mind of a Western hunter. White is guided by a morally dubious compass as he weighs up the value of a life, whether of a person or of an animal. In a stylistic tour de force, Schoeters builds the tension step by step and sets Hunter White, local tracker Dawid and young hunter !Ngate against each other in a gruesome and captivating game of chess. Her rhythmical style underscores the almost physical sense of threat created by the plot.

Novel | 224 pages | 69,000 words | November 2020

Rights sold: German (Paul Zsolnay), French (Actes Sud), Bulgarian (Izida), North Macedonian (Strange Forest), Serbian (Treci Trg)

On Trophy:

e on adrenaline **** De Standaard

Trophy. **** Cutting Edge

lift each other up in Trophy. Het Parool

l plot and big ethical questions about postcolonialism Stefan Hertmans, author of War and Turpentine

Gaea Schoeters (1976) is a very versatile author. She has written all sorts of texts, from travelogues and novels to operas an books. Additionally, she works as a journalist and writes columns and essays about current topics for various newspapers and literary magazines. Her work, praised for its descriptive and detailed writing style, is situated between formal experiment and social engagement.

English sample available

© Ivan Put

Hotlist

• A gripping psychological novel about erotic obsession and euthanasia

• e and sudden about faces, and the suspense experienced by both the reader and her characters, who gradually fall apart at t Het Parool

Rinske Hillen

The Men s Meal

This novel about parenthood, being an observer, failure and infidelity centers on three characters who each yearn to live without compromise. Ben wants to be uncompromising in his art, Wout in his desire to do the right thing, and Eva wants to love two men at once. They find that their ideals clash with reality, a reality that seems to be all about w permitted in the hospital, in interpersonal relationships.

Pediatrician Wout Vreibloet is under fire in the international press because he wants to help to end the life of a seriously ill baby. His wife Eva is an art journalist and interviews her former lover, the famous artist Ben Roovers. The love between them blossoms again, and Eva cannot hide this from Wout. When tensions rise between them, Wout decides to visit Ben and a dark alliance is formed within this love triangle.

The Men s Meal is a philosophical novel about euthanasia, art and the desire to live freely, without compromise. Rinske Hillen masterfully brings together different storylines and conflicting desires: the lust to live and the desire to die.

Novel | 264 pages | 60,000 words | September 2021

On The Men s Meal:

All the ingredients are there. There is an internal conflict, a social/ethical dilemma, subtle yet highly erotic tension between Eva and Ben, and vividly drawn characters. De Groene Amsterdammer

With surgical precision and a searchlight gaze, Hillen dissects her characters and the big questions they are struggling with, right down to the bone. VPRO Gids

Rinske Hillen (1975) studied philosophy at Cambridge and Amsterdam, and law in Utrecht. Her first novel Dry Rot (2017) won the ANV Award for Best Debut and was shortlisted for the Bronze Owl The German edition was also very well received.

English sample available

© Frank Ruiter

Hotlist

• Shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2021

• NRC Handelsblad

• An intimate story about family, loss and the question of what parenthood is all about.

Renée van Marissing Our Children

When Mia's father dies, she and her sister Iris have to clean out his house. The time she spends there brings back childhood memories and reveals sides of her father, a notorious drinker, that she had not seen before. Iris appears to remember certain events very differently than Mia and wants to get on with her life as soon as possible. Mia is about to become a mother. Her partner Sally is pregnant with their first child. It wa ice of who would become pregnant, because Mia doesn't feel the urge to pass on her DNA.

Novel | 40,000 words | First published: January 2021

On Our Children:

are few writers who can do what Renée van Marissing can do: tell a small, layered, well organized story in a modest way, managing to keep just enough tension.' De Groene Amsterdammer

from the start, She sets strong, striking scenes from which real people seem to step **** NRC Handelsblad

restrained, with flowing narrative, and with a touching conclusion in which the author finds words for the intimacy between parent and child: how the love for a father is ambivalent, but also intense and the source of Trouw

Renée van Marissing (1979) graduated as a drama writer from the Utrecht School of the Arts. She wrote music theatre performances She debuted with My Grandma's Blowing, followed by Tight Blue and the critically acclaimed Part time Astronaut English sample available

©
Bianca Sisterman

Hotlist

• An alarming look at the state of our planet and what we learned from the Club of Rome

• As captivating and informative as it is miraculously entertaining

Geert Buelens

The Things We Knew in 1972

Geert Buelens, cultural historian and a writer of novels and poetry confronts us in The Things We Knew in 1972 with the momentous report of the Club of Rome published half a century ago. It was an international bestseller. Sometimes it seems as if we have only just become aware of the dangers of pollution. But at the time everybody was thoroughly aware that we were on our way to destroy the planet. Nearly all ecological problems were known fifty years ago, they were thoroughly discussed by scientists, politicians and artists. Yet not much was done. How is it that we didn boldly, more resolutely? It was five to midnight then, it is in some respects well after now. How did those discussions go? And, above all: why have we evidently not learned the pproach is clear, original, and personal, embedding the legendary moment of this hugely important and shocking report in the cultural history of that era and the largely forgotten details. The Things We Knew in 1972 is admirably concise, it is both alarming and positive, informative, activating, entertaining and simply a joy to read.

Non fiction | 324 pages | 78,000

| January 2022

The press on Europa, Europa:

Frankfurter Rundschau

d moreover well written book on the European writers from before and during the war. An essential rea Die Zeit

Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag

Geert Buelens (1971), poet, literary critic and cultural historian He is a professor at Utrecht and Stellenbosch universities. His book on the European poets of World War I has also been published in English (Verso), German (Suhrkamp) and Serbian (Karpos). His cultural world history of the 1960s is seen as a standard work and voted Book of the Year by various media in both the Netherlands and Flanders. The translation rights have been sold to Germany (Suhrkamp) and France (Éditions Saint Simon).

English sample available

words
© Bob Bronshoff

Hotlist

• Taboo breaking, candid and urgent graphic memoir by bestselling and award winning author

• Oomen s new graphic novel on healing of intergenerational trauma

• Already 7,000 copies sold

Francine Oomen

My Mother s Daughter

One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of 18, most of them by male family members. Many mothers are aware but do nothing. This harrowing graphic novel, narrated using a collage technique and a cast of animals, monsters and real life figures, explores how patterns of behaviour are passed down in families. Francine Oomen delves into the underlying reasons for the repeated failure of her romantic relationships and comes face to face with an inherited history of abuse.

Francine Oomen has come to a point in her life that she recognizes patterns, not only in her own life, but also from generation to generation. When on her mother s deathbed she discovers a secret suspiciously like her own, she decides that it is time to break those patterns. She descends into her inner world, aided by a psychologist depicted as a mole, specialized in intergenerational trauma. Mole shows Francine the way to the girls Twelve, Thirteen and Sixteen, who are locked up because they have experienced things that were unbearable and unpalatable. My Mother s Daughter is an autobiographical search for the causes and consequences of sexual abuse and how to break the chain. This wonderful second graphic novel by Francine Oomen is once again candid, taboo breaking, topical and urgent.

Graphic memoir | 240 pages | November 2021

On My Mother s Daughter::

Heavy stuff, lightly packaged. Francine Oomen has produced a collage style book with comic strips and handwritten typography. A formula for success. de Volkskrant

The intensity of the writing sparks from the page, Oomen does the reader rest. My Mother Daughter Trouw

Francine Oomen (1960) is a writer, illustrator en designer. She started designing, writing and illustrating c 0. Her big breakthrough came with the award winning How to Survive series. Her books have been translated in 12 languages.

Her first graphic memoir Riding the Wave sold over 25,000 copies and was translated into Czech, German, Norwegian, Swedish and Spanish

Sample translation available

© Carilijne Pieters

Hotlist

• Entered the bestseller list at nr.1

• 45,000 copies sold, in the bestseller list for weeks

• A heartfelt cry by a young care innovator, the Greta Thunberg of Healthcare

Teun Toebes

Nursing Home

The lessons I learned from my roommates with dementia

In a heartfelt cry, this young care innovator takes you into the heart of nursing home care for people with dementia and gives you an insight like you have never seen before. He takes you all the way into his head when he experiences how tough life can sometimes be for people with dementia, but at the same time makes you laugh disarmingly heartily when he mischaracterises or discusses things with his 60 year old housemates But above all, in a disarming, emotional way, this young boy unravels the painful systems that prevail in care. And the results of his conclusions over the past year are nothing short of shocking. Not only does the system of nursing home care need to be completely reorganised, but even the fundamental rights of people with dementia are being denounced. Nursing Home, shows what systems, role patterns and stigma do to the way we look at people with dementia. But above all, it shows how it can be done! Never before has such an honest and enlightening book been published about the care of people we so often forget, people with dementia. Because if Teun believes one thing, it is that people never disappear, not even after a diagnosis of dementia. Or as he says himself: As soon as you make contact the dementia disappear

Memoir | 208 pages | 41,000 words | November 2021

Rights sold: German (Droemer Knaur, pre empt)

On Nursing Home:

Nursing Home is a passionate cry from the heart to change our healthcare system and our views on dementia Algemeen Dagblad

The passion and love with which you speak about the care for our elderly is heartwarming. You show that you can deliver moments of happiness to people who live with dementia. Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister

Teun Toebes (1999) is a healthcare ethics student and care innovator, who fights for better care for people with dementia. He has received many awards for his work and is a popular speaker at international conferences and in the media.

Sample translation available

© Merlijn Doomernik

Hotlist

• A monumental biography of William of Orange

20,000 copies sold, 7 weeks in the bestseller

beautiful biography full of personal details and clear descriptions of the world in which William of Orange lived and traded.'

Handelsblad

René van Stipriaan

The Silent

The life of William of Orange

About 1560, William of Orange was the richest and most promising nobleman in the Netherlands. Less than ten years later he had lost almost everything: his property, his power and also his good reputation. What had happened?

Orange had turned against the rule of the Spanish king Philip II, who in his eyes was despotic and greedy. He found supporters among other nobles, as well as common citizens. From 1566, with the Iconoclasm, the Netherlands revolted. Philip II sent the dreaded Duke of Alba with a large army. He confiscated all of Orange's property. This was the moment for Orange to take up arms themselves: the start of a war of attrition that plunged the Netherlands into a deep crisis. Tens of thousands of people died It only made the insurgents led by Orange more determined. Philip II's reign began to falter. What drove Orange? He was not a saint and in his day provoked more revulsion than is believed. Protestant strongholds like Ghent and Antwerp, once his closest allies, eventually turned their backs on him.

In The Silent, René van Stipriaan unravels the dizzying career of one of the most intransigent figures in world history: his ambitions, successes, manipulations, defeats. And also the tensions in his family, his bizarre married life and his tendency to operate in secret when it came to it.

Biography | 944 pages | Illustrated | November 2021

On The Silent:

The Silent cannot escape the parallels with contemporary phenomena, from framing to Trouw

n from the ground. **** de Volkskrant

Rene van Stipriaan (1959) is a cultural historian, expert in the field of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He compiled Eyewitnesses of World History with Geert Mak and Eyewitnesses of the Eighty Years' War with Luc Panhuysen. He also garnered much success with The Full Life, about Dutch literature and culture during the Republic. He worked twenty years on the biography of William the Silent

list. • 'A
*****NRC
© Bob Bronshoff

Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold

• Overwhelming response to the UK release of The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street

• His engrossing 400 page account of post Soviet disorder grips you and doesn The Spectator

Pieter Waterdrinker

The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street

One day in 1988, an enigmatic priest knocks on Pieter Waterdrinker an unusual request: will he smuggle seven thousand bibles into the Soviet Union. Pieter agrees, and soon finds himself living in the midst of one of the biggest social and cultural revolutions of our time, working as a tour operator ... with a sideline in contraband

Thirty years later, from his apartment on Tchaikovsky Street in Saint Petersburg, where he lives with his Russian wife and three cats, Pieter reflects on his personal history in the Soviet Union, as well as the century of revolutions that took place in and around his street. A master storyteller, he blends history with memoir to create an ode to the divided soul of Russia and an unputdownable account of his own struggles with life, literature, and love.

Rights sold: English (Scribe), German (Matthes & Seitz), Laguna (Serbian) English and German translation available 120,000 words | 432 pages | First published: November 2017

• This hypnotizing book is the fruit of mature mastery. ***** NRC Handelsblad

• 12,000 copies sold, longlisted for the Boekenbon Literature Prize and the Libris Literature Prize

Robbert Welagen Window, Key

How many lives does a human life contain? The life of writer Karlijn suddenly comes to a halt on the day she meets Hanna, a woman for whom she immediately develops feelings, but she also loses her boyfriend in an accident. Who do you find when you wake up the next day, yourself or someone else? The people surrounding Karlijn expect her to grieve, but she cannot. Her publisher hopes she will tell her story, but she is silent. When she begins to regard Hanna more and more as an accomplice, it is time to rewrite their story. Window, Key is an intriguing literary game, of attraction and guilt, of mourning, life and literature.

English sample available Options: German, Spanish, Japanese

Novel | 206 pages | 46,000 words | May 2021

Award winners

Rights sold

• 25,000 copies sold, entered the general bestseller list at nr. 3

• A hint of Jules et Jim, a dash of Sunset Boulevard and a nod to Thomas Mann Het Parool

Arnon Grunberg Death in Taormina

In a prayer that is not a prayer, a confession that is not a confession, a love letter, no, a belated answer to a love letter, Zelda (26) tells about her life as a decoy in rets

And about the rest of her life, which began after she promised her father at sixteen that she would not die prematurely. A lost notebook (coincidence? fate?) leads her to the actor Jonah (two time winner of the Louis d'Or). Together with him and a Swedish cowboy without a cowboy hat she travels to Taormina, according to Jona the better setting for happiness. Beneath the Sicilian orange trees, Zelda, Jonah and the Swede live as if existence were a story to which you have to surrender. But sooner or later the past catches up with you, turns out to be more vivid than the present, the truth proves quicker than all the small and big lies. Or does it not? What if the past never catches up with you? If you have to live with your fabrications forever?

Death in Taormina is a novel about justice and love, about forgiveness and pragmatism, acting and sincerity, whether what you live for is what you are willing to die for.

Rights sold: Hungarian (Gondolat)

Options: German, French, English, Kroatian

Novel | 320 pages | 85,000 words | August 2021

• is intriguing story by the Flemish crime writer Hilde Vandermeeren is a reminder that there is a The Times

• English translation recently published by Pushkin Press

The Scorpion s Head

When Gaelle wakes up, the nightmare begins. She is lying injured in a psychiatric hospital in Berlin, with no memory of the tense holiday weekend she has just spent with her family. Her son is in a coma in a different hospital and the police think she tried to kill him. Gaelle is sure she is innocent. But can she prove it? Michael is a contract killer working for Scorpio, a shadowy organisation of hitmen led by the ruthless Dolores. Any agent who breaks the rules signs their own death warrant. When his latest assignment stirs up old memories, Michael refuses to do the job and starts to run for his life.

Soon, both Gaelle and Michael will discover exactly what they are capable of doing to survive.

Rights sold: English (Pushkin Press), Arabic (Al Arabi)

English translation available

Thriller | 320 pages | 85,000 words | May 2016

Bestsellers /
/

Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold

• Bestselling, beloved author of modern fables

• Toon s work has sold over 1,000,000 copies in the Netherlands alone

• animals

Toon Tellegen

The Hedgehog, That s Me

I wish I could see inside my head, the hedgehog thought. What a mess it must be there! Why can I clean my house and not my head?

The Hedgehog, That's Me, a book that occupies a special place in Toon Tellegen's oeuvre, centres around the adventures, desires and deepest thoughts of the hedgehog. Or are these the author's own?

Illustrator Annemarie van Haeringen drew the hedgehog in all possible moods, from gloomy to cheerful, from sad to festively proud.

Novel | 206 pages | 46,000 words | May 2021

• her exciting new novel, Durlacher shows that the world is not so black and white. **** de Volkskrant

• Top 10 bestseller with 30,000 copies sold

Jessica Durlacher

The Voice

The Voice is set against the backdrop of the great events that ushered in this millennium a rich novel with a driving force, about family, loyalty, and the great sacrifice that demands people s commitment

A devout Somali asylum seeker joins the family of Zelda and Bor as a babysitter, and to their surprise turns out to be a phenomenal singer. Her name is Amal. She is so good that Zelda and Bor sign her up for the popular talent show The Voice During her spectacular first performance, Amal surprises the audience with a dramatic gesture that leads to a tidal wave of threats. The family feels called to protect it and is thus drawn into conflicts that will change their safe world forever.

Rights sold: German (Diogenes) English sample and German translation available

Novel | 432 pages | 118,000 words | February 2021

Award winners

Rights sold

• 18,000 copies sold, shortlisted for the Boekenbon Literature Prize

• What a sensible, intelligent and beautiful book Stefan Hertmans, author of War and Turpentine

Charlotte Van den Broeck

Bold Ventures

Van den Broeck has gathered thirteen tales about tragic architects tragic because they committed suicide in or on account of a building they designed. Their intervention in the public arena was a fiasco or else they viewed it as such. Charlotte Van den Broeck travelled extensively to find out more about these architects and their fate.

She examines whether there is a link between personal and public failure, between the importance of the public arena and the damaged reputation of the (usually male) architects And of course, the author also makes the connection between constructing buildings and writing texts, because all creation is a bold venture.

Rights sold: English (UK & Commonwealth, Chatto & Windus), English (North American, Other Press), German (Rowohlt), Spanish (Acantilado), French (Edition D Ormesson), Danish (Jensen og Dalgaard), Arabic (Al Arabi)

Non fiction | 272 pages | 80,000 words | October 2019

• The first comprehensive study of its kind, on the tragic camp fates of Anne Frank and each of her seven companions in hiding.

• 10,000 copies sold, translation rights sold for 11 languages

Bas von Benda Beckmann

After the Annex

On 27 January 1945 Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz by Russian soldiers. At that point not only his journey home started, but also his long quest to find out what had happened to his wife Edith, his daughters Margot and Anne and the four other people with whom he had been in hiding in the Annex at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam: Herman and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter and dentist Fritz Pfeffer. In the months after his liberation Otto Frank would discover that he is the only survivor out of these eight people. After the Annex continues the journey that Otto began. It is the ultimate attempt, based on thorough research in archives and available eye witness accounts, to reconstruct as precisely as possible what happened to the eight people in hiding after their arrest.

Rights sold: English (Unicorn), French (Notes de Nuit), German (Secession), Hungarian (Corvina), Spanish, Catalan, and Galician (Kalandraka), Portuguese (Brazil, Globo), Portuguese (Portugal, YeLa) Russian (Knizhniki)

Non fiction | 416 pages | 95,000 words | October 2020

Bestsellers /
/

/ Award winners / Rights sold

• Over 35,000 copies sold, German and French rights sold

• ully meandering between anecdotes, without much pretension, sometimes funny, often smart and always rig *** NRC Handelsblad

Caroline de Gruyter

It won t Get Any Better

Europeans often complain that the EU is divided, slow and weak. Believe it or not, the Habsburg Empire was the same Playing for time, avoiding conflict, working on never ending reforms and finding ugly compromises were key characteristics of Habsburg governance. By kicking the can down the road fortwursteln successive emperors managed to keep many nations, language groups and cultures safe and sound under one roof for about six hundred years. What are the Habsburg lessons for e? Could Europe s actually be its strength? And should we finally accept the EU as it is: a benign empire of sorts, in permanent change, unfinished per definition?

Rights sold: German (Böhlau Verlag), French (Actes Sud), Swedish (Lopinita), Hungarian (Europa) English sample available

Non fiction | Illustrated | 248 pages | 68,000 words | March 2021

• The internationally acclaimed graphic novel Vincent is published in more than 20 countries

Barbara Stok

The Philosopher, the Dog and the Wedding

In her characteristically accessible style, Stok recounts how Hipparchia sets off to Athens to marry the scion of a wealthy family. But once in Athens, she meets the Cynic philosopher Crates, who lives on the streets. His ideas and example cause the spirited Hipparchia to wonder: why choose to live in luxury if I cannot truly be free? She decides to break with tradition and ends up marrying Crates.

Time and again, Stok draws subtle parallels with the modern world, for example, with Hipparchia calling into question the subordinate position of women, slaves and animals. She compels the reader to ask: why is my life as it is? Why do we continue to follow the same patterns, century after century? Why do we not realise that there are different ways of going about things? Stok and Hipparchia enable the reader to see their own life in a different light.

With The Philosopher, the Dog and the Wedding, Stok has written an extraordinary, moving and inspiring story about the first female philosopher.

Graphic novel | 248 pages | November 2021

Rights sold: English (SelfMadeHero), French (EP Media), Spanish (Salamandra), Chinese (Shanghai 99), Korean (Open Books)

Bestsellers

Bestsellers / Award winners / Rights sold

• The latest book by one of the founders of Urgenda

• 15,000 copies sold

Jan Rotmans

Embracing Chaos

It is not at all surprising if you feel concerned right now. In fact, it would be very turbulent in the world, and it feels like we are in a permanent crisis. The restlessness in the world reflects the restlessness in ourselves. We are living on the cusp of a new era, in which everything that is taken for granted is being called into question.

We are at a crucial tipping point in human history. Covid 19, climate change, loss of biodiversity. After the latest report from the United Nations climate panel, no one can ignore the signs Nature is our lifeline. If we destroy that source of all life, we ultimately destroy ourselves.

Professor Jan Rotmans gives you his perspective on a world in transition. The result is a deeply affecting book that offers penetrating insights and a clear overview, sketches a hopeful perspective for the Netherlands and the world, and provides directions for action. Rotmans brings the big story back to the human level. Transitions are the work of man. We can still save the world and ultimately ourselves. The choice is ours.

English sample available

Non fiction | 420 pages | 110,000 words | June 2021

• story about the connection between heaven and hell. Het Parool

• 7,500 copies sold, Italian, and Russian rights sold

Frank Westerman

The Cosmic Comedy

The Cosmic Comedy is a philosophical meditation on the longing for a better world beyond the E tmosphere. Frank Westerman takes the reader on a grand tour through time, taking in our tilting image of the heavens, with or without god. Westerman comes to the conclusion: stargazing, driven by wonder, changes our view of the heavens; while space travel, driven by rivalry, changes our view of the earth. From Copernicus, Huygens and Schiaparelli to Juri Gagarin and the first female robot in space, The Cosmic Comedy is science non fiction at its most mind blowing.

Rights sold: Italian (Iperborea), Russian (Ripol) English sample available Non fiction | 284 pages | 61,000 words | February 2021

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

Grand Hotel Europa

Feature film rights sold to BlazHoffski

Film Rights Sold

Jaap Robben Summer Brother

Feature film rights sold to Family Affair Films

Bart Moeyaert

Every ry Nowadays

Feature film rights sold to De Mensen

Arnon Grunberg Birthmarks

Feature film rights sold Volya Films

Annet Schaap Lampie

Audiovisual rights sold to Pupkin Film

A.F.Th. van der Heijden Play Dead

Feature film rights sold to Revolver Film

Josephine Rombouts

Cliffrock Castle

Television series rights sold to Fiction Valley

Christine Otten The Last Poets

Audio visual rights sold to Flying Tiger Entertainment

Anna Woltz

Shark s Teeth

Feature film rights sold to BIND Film & TV

Contact for

Bram Kleiweg Jolijn Spooren

Henk van Straten Bad Blood

Audiovisual rights sold to Pupkin Film film rights:

: b.kleiweg@singeluitgeverijen.nl

: j.spooren@singeluitgeverijen.nl

Singel Publishers

The foreign rights team

From left to right: Jolijn Spooren, Tjarda Sikkema, Luciënne van der Leije & Martijn Prins

www.singeluitgeverijen.nl

Singel Publishers

Weteringschans 259

1017 XJ Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Phone: + 31 (0)20 760 72 10

Foreign rights: foreignrights@singeluitgeverijen.nl

Korea: geeniehan@mmagency.co.kr

China & Taiwan: grayhawk@grayhawk agency.com

Culinary titles: contact@anetteriedel.com

Translation grants

Foreign publishers wishing to publish translations of books by Singel Publishers may apply for a subsidy towards the translation costs. The Dutch Foundation for Literature and Flanders Literature exists to promote interest in Dutch language literature abroad. Further information and an application form are to be found on

www.letterenfonds.nl www.flandersliterature.be

Dutch Foundation for Literature: Nieuwe Prinsengracht 89

1018 VR Amsterdam

The Netherlands

t +31 (0)20 520 73 00

Fiction:

Barbara den Ouden | b.den.ouden@letterenfonds.nl Victor Schiferli | v.schiferli@letterenfonds.nl

Non Fiction:

Mireille Berman | m.berman@letterenfonds.nl

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