Gerbrand Bakker

David Colmer

A young woman flees Amsterdam and rents a farm in rural Wales where ten geese on the farm slowly disappear and speculation arises about her identity and her marital situation.

A Novel

Ten White Geese

Dimitri Verhulst

A tender, precise, and perfect-pitch novel about a widow of legendary beauty and a love that endures beyond death from the new Dutch literary star. Years ago, Madame Verona and her husband built a home for themselves on a hill in a forest above a small village. There they lived in isolation, practicing their music, and chopping wood to see them through the cold winters. When Mr. Verona died, the locals might have expected that the legendary beauty would return to the village, but Madame Verona had enough wood to keep her warm during the years it would take to make a cello—the instrument her husband loved—and in the meantime she had her dogs for company. And then one cold February morning, when the last log has burned, Madame Verona sets off down the village path, with her cello and her memories, knowing that she will have no strength to climb the hill again. Poignant, precise, and perfectly structured, this is a story of one woman's tender and enduring love—as a wife, and as a widow.

Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill

Annie M. G. Schmidt

Tibble is a reporter. He only ever writes about cats, and he's about to be fired. Minou is a young woman who has moved into Tibble's flat. She hates dogs, likes rooftops, loves the fishmonger, and happens to have been, until very recently, a cat. With her feline friends listening out for all the local human news, is Minou the answer to all Tibble's problems - or just the beginning of them?

The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof

When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days with his head under a cow. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while?

The Twin

Koen Vergeer

FORMULA 1 FANATIC is a passionate and evocative history of the ultimate in motor-racing from the early 1970s to the present. It is also the story of an obsession. Vergeer cleverly interweaves the lives and deaths of such legendary drivers as Jochen Rindt, Ronnie Peterson, Gilles Villeneuve, and Ayrton Senna with the progress of his boyhood obsession. His accounts of the titanic fights between the top drivers - like the 'professor' Alain Prost (cool, precise and seldom failing) and the 'son of God' Senna (incredibly fast, but at times unpredictable) or Damon Hill (impossibly burdened by his father's reputation) and Michael Schumacher (apparently infallible) - are only matched by the even more ferocious rivalry between the top teams. For anyone enthralled by motor-racing, FORMULA 1 FANATIC is a feast of recognition and nostalgia. For those who know nothing about Formula 1, it explains a mystery.

Formula 1 Fanatic

Peter Terrin

Winner of the European Union Literature Prize, Peter Terrin's The Guard is a haunting novel of perceived oppression by the an omnipresent, but unknown, authority. In the near future, Harry and Michel live in the basement of a luxury apartment block, guarding the inhabitants. No one goes outside. The world might be at war, it might even have been plunged into nuclear winter. No one knows. But one weekend, all of the residents leave the block, one by one. All but the man on floor 29. Harry and Michel stick to their posts. All they know, all they can hope for, is that if they are vigilant, the "Organization" will reward them with a promotion to an elite cadre of security officers. But what if there were no one left to guard? Playing on our darkest fears, The Guard is a tautly observed novel by a writer of striking and stylish originality.

The Guard

Paul van Loon

Hugo van Look

Wolf Wood has been home to generations of werewolves, including Grandpa Werewolf, and holds an important secret. But unscrupulous developers plan to destroy the woods and build blocks of flats and carparks. The werewolves are in danger - and so is their secret. When Alfie's mysterious dreams lead him to uncover the secret of Wolf Wood he knows he must save it - can his classmates help Alfie stop the bulldozers, before the wood gets turned into a block of flats?

Wolf Wood

Ramsey Nasr

'Prize-winning poet, essayist, dramatist and actor Ramsey Nasr, born 1974 in Rotterdam into a Palestinian-Dutch family, was voted Poet Laureate of the Netherlands in 2009. He selected the poems in Heavenly Life from his collections and works written as poet laureate. His award-winning translator, David Colmer, has dynamically recreated in English the patterns and sounds of Ramsey's inventive, bold and thoughtful poems. The collection includes a three-part poem inspired by the life of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and the title poem written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of composter Gustav Mahler's birth, and the poem that voted Nasr into his laureate post.

Selected Poems

Heavenly Life

Dutch Poetry translated into English Edited by David Colmer. The issue features Martinus Nijhoff, Gerrit Achterberg, M. Vasalis, Hanny Michaelis, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Lucebert, Hans Lodeizen, Jan Arends, Remco Campert, Hans Faverey, Cees Nooteboom, Bernlef, Toon Tellegen, Neeltje Maria Min, Anna Enquist, Frank Koenegracht, Hester Knibbe, Joke Van Leeuwen, Benno Barnard, Elma Van Haren, Esther Jansma, Nachoem M. Wijnberg, Menno Wigman, Erik Lindner, Mark Boog, Hagar Peeters, Maria Barnas, Alfred Schaffer, Mustafa Stitou, Ramsey Nasr, Kira Wuck, Ester Naomi Perquin, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Donald Gardner and Jane Draycott. Translators for the issue include James Brockway, David Colmer, Donald Gardner, Vivien D. Glass, Michele Hutchison, Francis R. Jones, David McKay, Scott Rollins and Judith Wilkinson.

The Enchanting Verses Literary Review Issue XXVI

Poetry from the Netherlands

FORMULA 1 FANATIC is a passionate and evocative history of the ultimate in motor-racing from the early 1970s to the present. Vergeer interweaves the lives and deaths of such legendary drivers as Gilles Villeneuve and Ayrton Senna with the progress of his own longtime obsession. His accounts of the titanic fights between the top drivers - like the 'professor' Alain Prost (cool and precise) and the 'son of God' Senna (fast but unpredictable) or Damon Hill (burdened by his father's reputation) and Michael Schumacher (infallible) - are matched by the ferocious rivalry between the top teams. For anyone enthralled by motor-racing, FORMULA 1 FANATIC is a feast of recognition and nostalgia.

Bart Moeyaert

A boy confronts his mother's suitor on New Year's Eve when the boy kills the man's duck and, in a fit of anger, the man kills the boy's dog.

Kaleem Hussain

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