Tales from the Dutch

The Twin

by Gerbrand Bakker

Vintage

Bakker’s paean to the Dutch countryside is beautifully understated, as is his portrayal of the characters. A sense of turmoil bubbling under a skein of stillness applies to Helmer and to the landscape around him.

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Beyond Sleep

by WF Hermans

Harvill Secker

Summer in northern Norway: endless hours of light, clouds of mosquitoes, kilometre after kilometre of rocky terrain and stunted trees. Into this barren landscape trek four geology students, three of them Norwegian, one – Alfred Issendorf – Dutch. Each is...

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The Darkroom of Damocles

by WF Hermans

Harvill Secker

Fifty years since it was first published in Dutch, Hermans' tale of espionage in Holland during the Second World War has finally been translated into English. It has been worth the wait.

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Shutterspeed

by Erwin Mortier

Harvill Secker

Erwin Mortier’s deceptively simple tale of an adolescent boy growing up in a Flemish village with his aunt and uncle, is full of such beautiful, spare writing. Its inclusion on the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist is no surprise.

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