Love letter to my students
I have taught Dutch to private students in Yerevan for almost five years now. I am not a (language) teacher by profession and teaching languages is definitely not my calling in life. I don’t see myself standing in front of a classroom full of pupils or students, for example. I taught German and English for a [...]
The Dinner Club (De eetclub) by Saskia Noort
The same friend who lent me the two Tonke Dragt books I read recently, also lent me Saskia Noort‘s De eetclub, which is available in English as The Dinner Club. When it was first published in Holland in 2004, De eetclub became a huge bestseller. It was billed as either a literary thriller or as [...]
Character (Karakter) by F. Bordewijk
Karakter by Ferdinand Bordewijk is one of the classics of Dutch literature. It was published in English with the same title, Character. In 1997, the book was made into an Academy Award winning movie by Dutch director Mike van Diem. For a long time I was under the impression that I had read the book [...]
Echte mannen eten geen kaas by Maria Mosterd
Echte mannen eten geen kaas has been a bestseller and its author Maria Mosterd a bit of a media hype in Holland since the book was published a year and a half ago and I think it deserves the attention, because it is an urgent and important book, though it does raises some important questions. [...]
De pianoman by Bernlef
De pianoman (The piano man) is a novella of barely ninety pages by Dutch writer Bernlef inspired by a story some you might remember from a few years ago when a man appeared out of nowhere in the English town of Sheerness. He didn’t speak, but he did play the piano. Hence his nickname Piano [...]
