Singel Publishers fiction spring 2014

Literary fiction

Marente de Moor Roundhay Garden Scene

• 10,000 copies sold so far • AKO Literatuurprijs 2011 for The Dutch Maiden – 75,000 copies sold • Shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize “On 16 September, 1890, a man took the train from Dijon to Paris; it was the last time anyone heard from him.” Marente de Moor’s latest novel is based on the life story of inventor Louis Le Prince (1842–?), who made his film Roundhay Garden Scene long before Edison and Lumière presented their motion pictures. In his luggage were stacks of paper full of great ideas that were ready to be patented. But, during his train journey, he was seized by doubt. Could he accept responsibility for the consequences that his invention might have?

Years later, his son goes in search of him and discovers who benefitted from the disappearance.

Roundhay Garden Scene is a tragicomic, elegiac novel about our desire to capture events for the future, and a son’s desperate attempt to make an impression on a father who has vanished.

‘In Marente de Moor, Dutch literature has gained a very original author, one with a seemingly inexhaustible imagination.’ – Trouw ‘… her observations are as intelligent as they are original, and reveal great narrative skill.’ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ‘Roundhay, Garden Scene is a world-class book. Breath-taking.’ ★ ★ ★ ★ – De Limburger

Original title Roundhay, tuinscène Hardback | 336 pages First published: October 2013, Querido www.querido.nl Rights: rights@singel262.nl Querido Spring 2014

Marente de Moor (1972) lived in Russia in the 1990s, where she worked as a correspondent for De Groene Amsterdammer.

Her highly praised debut novel The Transgressor came out in 2007. Her novel The Dutch Maiden won the prestigious AKO Literatuurprijs in 2011.

© Eddo Hartmann

Literary fiction

Johan Faber The War Vet

• A lone wolf and a missing girl: a chilling story about an Afghanistan war veteran A hero in Afghanistan, a suspected criminal in the Dutch border village of Neerloo, war veteran Meindert Oosting’s life has taken a wrong turn. He leads a quiet life with his dog in a remote house, sails on the local lake and borrows the occasional book from the village library. Meindert is a lone wolf who hasn’t been able to process his experiences in Afghanistan.

During the war, he joined an American unit of ruthless snipers and back in the Netherlands, he was awarded the highest military decoration. A whacko, that’s how the village sees him.

He makes friends with a fourteen year-old girl from the village, and when the girl suddenly goes missing, he immediately comes under suspicion.

Did Meindert murder the girl?

While war heroes used to be lauded, nowadays they just seem to arouse suspicion. Public opinion judges Meindert even before there is any proof.

Meanwhile, other villagers seems just as likely suspects: the girl’s criminal father, the aggressive school bully who had a crush on her, and Meindert’s friend and comrade-in-arms, Menno.

And then an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan turns up in the village. In short: everything in Meindert’s head is reset to cope with a war situation.

Original title De veteraan Paperback | 256 pages | First published: April 2014, Nijgh & Van Ditmar www.nijghenvanditmar.nl rights@singel262.nl Nijgh & Van Ditmar Spring 2014

In The War Vet, Johan Faber (1970) convincingly gets into the head of an Afghanistan war veteran. His fears, experiences and longings clash in a terrifying way with everyday life. © Merlijn Doomernik

Literary fiction

Hella S. Haasse

A WONDERFUL WRITER TO REDISCOVER © Bauer

• The no. 1 women’s writer in the Dutch modern classics genre • Her work is translated into 21 languages • The Foundation for Dutch Literature will cover full translation costs • New translations well-reviewed in the U.K. press

Since Portobello Books published two important novels by the Dutch ‘Queen of Literature’ Hella S. Haasse, her work has found an international audience. The Tea Lords and The Black Lake are now available in splendid English translations by the prize-winning Ina Rilke, but there is much more to rediscover in Hella S. Haasse’s backlist. For instance, The Ways of the Imagination, an impressive product of Haasse’s creative powers in which her evocative prose shimmers with hidden meanings.

A truck driver gives a stranded family a lift to the south of France and, as they drive through the night, tells them about his adventures on the road.

The reader takes on the role of a detective, tying together the loose ends and reconstructing the story of a life.

‘The Scarlet City is rich historical fiction written with panache.’ – New York Times ‘Haasse’s challenging novel combines a wealth of historical knowledge with remarkable literary history.’

– Washington Post ‘Haasse once again serves up a historical page-turner.’ – Kirkus Reviews

www.querido.nl Rights: rights@singel262.nl Querido Spring 2014

Or The Scarlet City, an ingenious novel based around the figure of Giovanni Borgia, shortly before the papal city was plundered by Charles V’s troops in 1527. It begins: ‘I am a Borgia twice over, perhaps thrice over. My origins are a mystery to others, a secret, and more: a source of anguish to myself.’ This is historical fiction at its best!

The Guardian: “Realizing her characters were once flesh and blood made me feel I had read the most humane sort of biography, in which the writer inhabits every emotional recess and significance. That may make The Tea Lords sound like half a novel; but read it and you might agree that it is more in the nature of an improvisation, a graceful, marvellously achieved improvisation that only a novelist of the greatest imagination and sympathy could have written.” Julian Evans The Independent: “Hella S. Haasse’s The Tea Lords stands in a Dutch tradition which includes Multatuli’s seminally shocking Max Havelaar (1860). Translated into graceful prose, this morally challenging work, constructed from documents and letters, has already become a novel by which others, inside and outside its tradition, can be judged.” Paul Binding

Literary fiction

Joke van Leeuwen Celebrations of a new era

• Winner AKO-Literature Prize 2013!

• 30,000 copies sold • Very succesfull Dutch children’s book writer in translation – now also for adults More than two centuries ago, a capital with an uprising. The young Catho has grown up in a home for abandoned children and is hardly aware of the revolution going on outside. That is until newcomer nurse Berthe, the only person to care about her, covertly teaches her to read and write.

Sadly, the two fall out of touch with each other, both convinced that the other had betrayed them.

In the meantime pianoforte builder Tobias, a new arrival in the country, forms a special friendship with someone who ends up making him a controversial proposal.

The new era demands happiness, but how do they achieve that? In this breathtaking novel Joke van Leeuwen makes her characters go look for happiness – hopeful until the last page and for long afterwards as well.

A poignant novel which takes place in Paris at the time of the French Revolution, but has been written in a very modern style. Accessible, striking and poetic in an understated manner.

‘Powerful and meaningful’. ★ ★ ★ ★ – NRC ‘A serene historical novel in which everything tingles with promise’ ★ ★ ★ ★ – de Volkskrant ‘Words and sentences that just have to be tasted… A feast: detailed, melancholic, with just a glimmer of hope.’ ★ ★ ★ ★ – De Morgen Original title Feest van het begin Paperback | 248 pages Published in August 2012 by Querido www.querido.nl Rights: rights@singel262.nl Querido Spring 2014

Joke van Leeuwen (1952) studied graphical techniques and history.

She is extremely versatile: she writes, illustrates and produces plays. She won many awards with her children’s books and poetry. Celebrations of a new era is her third novel for adult readers.

Literary fiction

Arnon Grunberg The Man Without Illness

• ‘A stunning novel.’ – NRC • Already 50,000 copies sold In The Man Without Illness, the young Swiss architect Samarendra travels to Baghdad to work on a design for a new opera house. He is convinced that the duty of the architect is to make people’s lives easier and more beautiful.

The Man Without Illness deals with the Western illusion of comfort and security. Sharply and sometimes sardonically, Grunberg depicts a world in which nothing is as it seems and human beings are playthings of powers that they cannot control.

Rob Schouten in Trouw: “The issue has long been not whether Grunberg writes great and beautiful literature but how deeply and painfully he drills into our humanist platitudes. After The Man Without Illness, I am inclined to say: more deeply than ever.”

‘Hilarious and harrowing.’ ★ ★ ★ ★ – Het Parool ‘Grunberg produces great literature here, with casual class.’

– De Standaard • Rights sold: Germany (Kiwi), France (Heloïse d’Ormesson), Turkey (Alef), Hungary (Gondolat) and Israel (Hakkibutz).

Original title De man zonder ziekte Paperback | 224 pages First published: May 2012, Nijgh & Van Ditmar www.nijghenvanditmar.nl Rights: English Sample translation available Arnon Grunberg is represented by the Arnon Grunberg Agency.

Contact Oscar van Gelderen or Emile Op de Coul at: info@arnongrunbergagency.com Nijgh & Van Ditmar Spring 2014

Arnon Grunberg (1971) is one of the most widely read young European writers today.

His provocative and witty books have won almost all major Dutch awards and have been translated into more than 20 languages. He lives and works in New York.

Literary fiction

Pauline Genee Duel with a Horse

• A horse that can do arithmetic in a bewitching debut novel • ‘Book of the Month’ on Holland’s most popular TV programme, De wereld draait door Two men and a horse, these are the main characters in Pauline Genee’s acclaimed debut novel. The horse is called Klüger Hans and he really did exist.

Wilhelm von Osten, a teacher and man of independent means, practices and practices with his horse until it can solve extremely complex sums. Emilio Rendich, a painter and a seducer, paints the horse and hopes that it will make him rich once the mathematical genius has become world famous. The two men are equally stubborn and have completely opposing ambitions for the horse. The two men dig their own graves and become unforgettable characters of the type we mainly see in Dutch literature in the works of master storyteller, Thomas Rosenboom. The latter said of this debut, ‘I read Duel with a Horse in a single sitting.’

‘Ornate prose, striking local German colour and a feeling for rhetoric; the pleasure the writer must have experienced when drawing and colouring 1904 Belin is palpable. This debut also succeeds in telling a fascinating story with an intriguing plot.’

– NRC Handelsblad ‘A real find. We think she’s written a masterpiece.’ – Bookshop panel, De wereld draait door Original title Duel met paard Paperback | 256 pages First published: January 2014, Querido www.querido.nl Rights: rights@singel262.nl Querido Spring 2014

Pauline Genee (1968) occupied various positions at the Dutch Foreign Office, after graduating in French and Russian. Since 2011, she has combined writing with freelance work. Duel with a Horse is her debut as a novelist.

© Denise Winters

Literary fiction

Wanda Bommer The Bycatch

• ‘A trip you don’t want to miss out on’ – Marie Claire

The paths of actress, Louise Bergmans, her adolescent daughter, Merel, and car thief, Titus Troost, cross in the car park of a motorway service station as they head south for a summer holiday. What should have been just a one-off confrontation degenerates into a bizarre road trip through Tuscany through a series of rash decisions.

Louise finds herself confronted with the greatest fear of any parent: the sudden disappearance of her child. Titus, who has chosen a reclusive lifestyle for a reason, is saddled with a rebellious creature who, in no time at all, manages to pry loose the lid of his cesspit. Merel takes stock of her young life and decides to exploit the situation by catching a fast train to adulthood.

Meanwhile, the three protagonists try to get a handle on the new situation, each in their own way. Making wrongful assumptions and applying warped logic, all three of them end up taking the same direction: the wrong one.

The Bycatch is as thrilling as it is humorous, as absurd as it is realistic, and above all, as shocking as it is touching.

‘A novel that has everything needed to entertain thousands of readers for many hours this summer’ – – De Twentsche Courant Tubantia ‘Bommer is quietly working away at a solid oeuvre – lucid, funny and fast-paced,’ – Linda Original title De bijvangst Paperback | 304 pages First published: February 2014, Nijgh & Van Ditmar www.nijghenvanditmar.nl rights@singel262.nl Nijgh & Van Ditmar Spring 2014

Wanda Bommer (1969) is a writer and booker for the band, De Dijk. Her previous novels were Boom (2008), Engel (2009) and Panorama West (2011) and received wonderful reviews.

© Lona Aalders

Literary fiction

Jamal Ouariachi Tenderness

• Shortlisted for the Gouden Boekenuil • One of the ‘Ten Books’-selection of the Foundation for Dutch Literature Jamal Ouariachi’s second novel, Tenderness, has been met with warm praise. The daily paper, De Limburger called Ouariachi a ‘writing talent in the rich tradition of [Thomas] Rosenboom and [Afth.] Van der Heijden’.

Twice a week, a post room employee does his rounds through the building of a large magazine publishing company. During his lunch breaks, he wanders along the dreary avenues of the business park. In the evening, he watches TV or immerses himself in the endless stream of online opinions.

The idea of true love is something he smashed to pieces with his own hands years ago.

When he finds a basket of young kittens near his office, he finds himself unexpectedly overwhelmed with tenderness. Shortly afterwards, he succumbs to love again, in the shape of the ambitious Zerline.

The post room worker dares dream of a better life once more – but in his case it is not without danger.

‘Tenderness is a psychological novel in top form’ – Trouw ‘Ouariachi is the real thing. His craziness is a joy’ – Vrij Nederland ‘The beautiful, painful journey of a mysterious, insatiable man’ ★ ★ ★ ★ – de Volkskrant Original title Vertedering Paperback | 364 pages First published: March 2013, Querido www.querido.nl English sample available.

Rights: rights@singel262.nl Querido Fall 2013

Jamal Ouariachi (1978) studied psychology and debuted in 2010 with The Destruction of Prosper Morèl. Since then he has been writing sensational stories, articles and polemical pieces for NRC Next, HP/De Tijd, de Volkskrant, Knack Focus and Vogue, amongst others.

© Arnout Hulskamp