Erwin Mortier

roman

Godenslaap

Een bijna 100-jarige Vlaamse vrouw beschrijft haar ervaringen rond de Eerste Wereldoorlog in Vlaanderen en Noord-Frankrijk om en aan het front.

Paul Vincent

A Mother's Book of Hours

Stammered Songbook

Een kleine jongen groeit op in een Vlaams dorp in de jaren zestig.

Sluitertijd

De geschiedenis van de vriendschap tussen twee klasgenoten, die, zonder dat hun omgeving het merkt, uitgroeit tot een liefdesrelatie.

Mijn tweede huid

Piesni belkotu

Een Vlaamse jongen groeit op bij zijn grootouders en ontdekt gaandeweg dat een van zijn ooms in de oorlog als SS'er collaboreerde met de Duitsers.

Marcel

Van een melancholische klokkenmaker tot transcendente tuinkabouters en de eerste zwarte paus – in Glorie en Heerlijkheid trekt Erwin Mortier alle registers open om te tonen wat het korte verhaal voor hem is: een literaire speeltuin die hij bezoekt tijdens het schrijven aan ander werk, een laboratorium waarin alles mogelijk is en niets te gek. Het onversneden vertelplezier, het spel met de taal, de buitelingen der gedachten – het spat van het papier af. Glorie en Heerlijkheid is een staalkaart van wat Mortier als auteur vermag, en tegelijk een pleidooi voor meer speelsheid in de letteren. Als schrijver wil hij de wereld al zijn tanden laten zien – in een glimlach weliswaar.

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beste gedichten van de Herman de Coninckprijs 2021

De 44

Shutterspeed

While the Gods Were Sleeping is a novel about the magnitude and impact of the First World War, the recollections of which are recorded in the notebooks of the elderly Helena. The young Helena is sent to her uncle's country house before the war, and from here she witnesses scenes of indescribable horror. But it is also where she meets Matthew again, a British Army photographer who she goes on to marry. This is a story not about spectacular events; rather, Mortier is concerned with writing about war, history and the past with great empathy and engagement, and with a mixture of melancholy, qualification and resignation.

While the gods were sleeping

My Fellow Skin is a beautiful, affectionate novel told from the point of view of an impressionable young boy. The novel opens before the boy can talk, and we follow Anton's first, tentative steps on the path to adulthood. He gradually begins to grasp an understanding of time and death, and when he goes to school he falls in love for the first time -- not with the schoolgirls his peers are interested in, but with his classmate, Willem. A gentle, protective relationship develops between them, and this gives Anton his own, new identity, his 'fellow skin'. But their love ends tragically, and Anton ultimately loses not only his love, but also his youth, the protection of his parents, and the old house in the village. He is left desolate. --

My fellow skin

«La mort a tout son temps, plus que les dix doigts des jours. Pour elle, l’ennui ce n’est que de l’oxygène. La mort est l’absence grisante de mouvement qui se répand l’après-midi sur les meubles et te chatouille le nez quand tu es au lit, allongé sur le dos, pendant que Maman ou Tante veille à ce que tu te reposes. » Marcus, un petit garçon de cinq ans, observe la mort et la vie qui cohabitent au cours d’une chaude semaine d’été, dans une grande maison de la campagne flamande. Allongé la journée sur une couverture sous le cerisier ou nageant la nuit entre ses draps, il cherche à capter tout ce qui se perd et disparaît sans bruit. Erwin Mortier poursuit sa petite musique fascinante dans ce récit qui met en valeur la magie des mots du monde de l’enfance « figé par la poésie ».

Les dix doigts des jours

Written from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy who lives with his grandmother, Marcel is a striking debut novel describing the vivid history of a family in a Flemish village. The mysterious death of Marcel, the family favourite, has always haunted the young boy. With the help of his schoolteacher, he starts to discover the secrets of Marcel’s ‘black’ past. The story of his death on the Eastern Front for the sake of Flanders, and the shame this brought upon his family gradually become clear. Erwin Mortier unravels this shameful family past in an unusually sensitive and evocative manner.

In this story about love as second skin, Mortier remains true to the perspective of his dazzling debut, Marcel, looking at the world through the eyes of an observant and impressionable young boy, Anton. As he grows up, each tentative step on the path to adulthood brings knowledge, understanding and responsibility. He finds solace in a friendship with Willem and believes he has found a way to deal with his increasingly uneasy relationship with life. But this bond introduces a new emotional hurdle for Anton, an awakening love that gives him his own identity and envelops him like a skin. The subtlety with which Mortier describes a young man's experiences and feelings makes this an extraordinarily touching tale, a tender story of love, innocence and protection, and of painful loneliness when things fall apart. 'This is a Bildungsroman which is related to much European literature from Proust and Mann onwards... peculiarly unforgettable' AS Byatt, Guardian 'A sparkling novel with a thunderous effect [...] a Flemish song of truth and semblance' Vrij Nederland

My Fellow Skin

Joris has lived with his aunt and uncle in a village since his early childhood his father died young and his mother moved to Spain. He is a quiet and introverted child who, his relatives fear, resents the loss of his parents deeply. The gentle rhythm of life, however, is about to be disturbed, awakening in Joris charged memories of his dead father. With the past swathed in obscurity and rumours circulating about his parents, Joris feels insecure and vulnerable and his attempts to reconstruct his family history from photos are continually frustrated. As Joris grows up and his aunt and uncle age, the end of his youth approaches, as does a definitive confrontation with his father. In a style marked by extraordinary elegance and subtlety, Erwin Mortier brings a lost world back to life. Shutterspeed is an enchanting novel which evokes all the mystery, wonder and confusions of childhood. Mortier's elegant sentences skip across the pages and rock the reader as if in a boat de Volkskrant Beautifully elegiac... a remarkable novel. Gay Times

'It sounds dreadful,' I said to him one day. 'But actually the war is the best thing that ever happened to me.' Helena's mother always said she was a born poetess. It was not a compliment. Now an old woman, Helena looks back on her life and tries to capture the past, filling notebook after notebook with memories of her respectable, rigid upbringing, her unyielding mother, her loyal father, her golden-haired brother. She remembers how, at their uncle's country house in the summer of 1914, their stately bourgeois life of good manners, white linen and afternoon tea collapsed into ruins. And how, with war, came a kind of liberation amidst the mud and rubble-and the appearance of a young English photographer who transformed her existence. Lyrical and tender, filled with images of blazing intensity, While the Gods Were Sleeping asks how it is possible to record the dislocation of war; to describe the indescribable. It is a breathtaking novel about the act of remembering, how the past seeps into our lives and how those we have lost leave their trace in the present. "Mortier writes so well that you are inclined to see everything else as of secondary importance" NRC Handelsblad "A monumental, phenomenal book" De Morgen "If Marcel Proust had a descendant somewhere in Flanders, he must have been born in Ghent." Knack

While the Gods Were Sleeping

op reis met Gerard Reve, 18-26 augustus 1997

Avonden op het landgoed

In De onbevlekte keert Marcel terug naar huis in een laatste poging het verzwegen verleden te doorbreken en uit te vinden waarom hij de naam draagt van zijn aan het oostfront gestorven grootoom. Mortiers vervolg op zijn veelgeprezen en prijswinnende debuutroman Marcel is andermaal een donker familieverhaal, waarin de Vlaamse klei nietsontziend wordt omgewoeld om het duistere verleden aan het licht te brengen. Dit doet Mortier op weergaloze wijze, in zijn verfijnde, suggestieve stijl, waarin geen woord, geen letter, geen komma op de verkeerde plek staat en het wemelt van de trefzekere beelden. Met deze langverwachte, nieuwe roman over de complexiteit van liefhebben bevestigt Erwin Mortier eens te meer tot de absolute topklasse van de Nederlandstalige literatuur te behoren.

De onbevlekte

A beautiful, elegaic novel about the deep emotions at work under the unruffled surface of a childhood in the countryside.

Erwin Mortier

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