F. Bordewijk Award for De Bloemen (The Flowers) by Koen Peeters

The F. Bordewijk Award 2010 goes to Koen Peeters for De Bloemen (The Flowers). The jury praises the novel that ‘carefully balances between restrained melancholy and sharp observations’. Earlier, De Bloemen has been longlisted for the AKO Literature Prize, to be awarded on Monday 8 November.

The F. Bordewijk Award is one of the most prestigious Dutch prose awards. It is awarded annually in The Hague by the Jan Campert foundation. Among others, Arnon Grunberg, Frans Kellendonk and Tommy Wieringa were honoured with the prize. Paul Verhaeghen received the award in 2005.

In De Bloemen, Koen Peeters tells us how the lives of grandfathers, fathers and sons can intertwine. He shows us how this world is made by man, and at the same time how little man is makeable himself.

Somewhere around the year 1900. Louis, the youngest member of a farm family is ten years old. He witnesses how his very best friend, a pig, is slaughtered. He instantly decides to sell butter and eggs when he grows up. Which he later does. Louis dreams of starting a big business, but that plan never happens. His son, René, is an exemplary student. He joins the youth movement and finally chooses the path of politics. After a political meeting, he is attacked and badly injured... The son of the third generation, the narrator of this story, starts looking for the traces his forefathers left behind. With De Bloemen, Koen Peeters reinvents the family novel. The result is a subtle as well as a moving story, where nostalgia is carried by the endearing sensitivity and alert intelligence of the writer.

Koen Peeters (1959) was awarded with the Nieuwe-Yang prize for his debut Conversaties met K. (Conversations with K.). Later, he wrote a.o. Bezoek onze kelders (Visit our cellars), De postbode (The postman) (NCR Prize), Het is niet ernstig, mon amour (It’s not serious, my love) (Literature Award of the Province of Flemish Brabant), Acacialaan (Acacia avenue) (longlist AKO Literature Prize), Mijnheer Sjamaan (Mr. Shaman) and the collection of poems Fijne motoriek (Fine motor skills). His highly acclaimed Grote Europese Roman (Great European Novel) was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2008 and was translated a.o. into Italian, Hungarian and Romanian. Koen Peeters is an editor with the literature magazine Dietsche Warande & Belfort.

Van Den Broeck and Peeters longlisted for the AKO literature prize

Return to Walden by Walter van den Broeck an The Flowers by Koen Peeters have been longlisted for the AKO literature prize. The shortlist will be made public on Friday, October 1.

Duepunti publishes Grande romanzo europeo (Koen Peeters)

'Mi piacerebbe scrivere questo romanzo come un sistema periodico. Come ha fatto Primo Levi: per ogni capitolo, un elemento chimico. Sì, ogni capitolo del mio romanzo deve essere centrato su una capitale, come se ogni capitale fosse un elemento chimico all’interno di un ingegnoso sistema-Bruxelles. Con personaggi che sono alla ricerca della passione divoratrice, piena di promesse, impaziente. Oppure spinti dal proprio passato personale, e, appunto per questo, saggi e tristi.'
Una geografia dell’anima che fa da sfondo alla ricerca di una inafferrabile felicità.

Due uomini d’affari, un giovane inquieto e un vecchio dal passato ingombrante, ci proiettano in un mondo fatto di terminal aereoportuali, corridoi, centri commerciali, uffici e grattacieli. Persi nella babele delle lingue, tra la folla di uomini e cose sconosciuti che restano stranieri, proviamo la sensazione di essere parte di un unico grande intrigo di segreti inconfessabili.

Great European Novel (Koen Peeters) in Slovenian

Modrijan has released the Slovenian translation of Koen Peeters' Great European Novel.

Koen Peeters en français

Des extraits du Grand Roman Européen de Koen Peeters ont étés traduits en français et publiés dans la revue Septentrion (2009/3).

Italian rights Great European Novel (Koen Peeters) sold

(Koen Peeters as seen by photographer Koen Broos.)

Italian rights for Great European Novel (Koen Peeters) are sold to Due Punti Edizioni. This independent Italian publisher has an interesting list, reaching from Le Clézio to Alfred Jarry, Jacques Vaché and Boris Vian.

Great European Novel by Koen Peeters was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2008 and longlisted for the Gouden Uil Literature Prize 2008. The novel has as many chapters as there are European capital cities. It's a biting quest for personal happiness and a quest for the European soul. Bulgarian, Hungarian and Slovenian translations of Great European Novel are upcoming. Don't miss Koen Peeters' precious new novel, The Flowers, which will be published in September.

Koen Peeters in Czech: Velký evropský román

Czech literary magazin Plav publishes a Czech sample translation of Koen Peeters’ Great European Novel. Translator Martina Loučková has also written a brief introduction to Peeters’ work. The special Belgian issue of Plav is devoted both to French- and Dutch-speaking authors like William Cliff, Paul Willems, Henri Michaux, Tom Lanoye en Bart Moeyaert.

Bulgarian, Hungarian and Slovenian translations of Great European Novel are upcoming. Don't miss Koen Peeters' precious new novel, The Flowers, which will be published in September.

First ever rights deal closed on Facebook: Great European Novel sold to Gondolat (Hungary)

This Saturday (13th December) Belgian publisher Meulenhoff | Manteau (Antwerp) and Hungarian publisher Gondolat (Budapest) closed a deal for the Hungarian rights of Great European Novel by Flemish author Koen Peeters, a novel originally written in Dutch. János Boris, Gondolat’s publisher, started a conversation on Facebook with Harold Polis, his Belgian colleague, announcing that he would buy the Hungarian rights. Posting messages on each others message boards, the two quickly realized they were experiencing something completely new: the birth of an international publishing culture on Facebook. János Boris: “It hasn't occurred to me that we were making history, but God, we are!”

Great European Novel by Koen Peeters was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2008 and longlisted for the Gouden Uil Literature Prize 2008. The novel has as many chapters as there are European capital cities. It's a biting quest for personal happiness and a quest for the European soul. Alessandro Piperno wrote about the novel in Corriere Della Sera: “A revelation. Reading a story like this one makes you happy.” De Volkskrant called it “an ambitious and delicate novel: Europe as a precious mistake.”

Meulenhoff | Manteau is a leading publisher of Dutch-language contemporary fiction and non-fiction in Belgium and the Netherlands. Meulenhoff | Manteau (an imprint of Standaard Uitgeverij) is the publisher of the original Dutch version of Omega Minor, the epic novel by Paul Verhaeghen which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2008). Omega Minor was sold to Dalkey Archive Press (US), Eichborn (Germany), Le Cherche Midi (France), Polis (Greece). Recent sales include the German rights (Luchterhand) of Woman Country by Flemish debut prize winner Rachida Lamrabet. Earlier this month Great European Novel was sold to Slovenia (Modrijan) and Bulgaria (Colibri).

Gondolat is one of Hungaí's major publishing companies long established on the Hungarian publishing scene mainly as a academic publisher. While academic books remains its core activity, Gondolat now also has an increasingly strong international fiction line concentrating on contemporary authors. Gondolat's World Literature Series now boasts such international stars as Russian writer Vladmir Sorokin, the author of Ice, or last year's Man-Booker Prize winner, Anne Enright , whose Family Gathering has just appeared in Hungarian for the Christmas season. Earlier this year Gondolat bought the Hungarian rights for Omega Minor.

For more information:

Meulenhoff | Manteau
Harold Polis
meulenhoffmanteau.blogspot.com (English blog)
harold.polis@standaarduitgeverij.be

Gondolat
János Boris
www.gondolatkiado.hu
boris.janos@gondolat.axelero.net

Slovenian rights Great European Novel (Koen Peeters) sold

Slovenian rights for Koen Peeters' Great European Novel have been sold to Modrijan Publishers. Modrijan has published a.o. Hugo Claus in Slovenian. Great European Novel will be published in hardback, in the series 'Zbirka Sodobni'.

Earlier this month Bulgarian rights have been sold to Colibri Publishers.

Great European Novel was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2008 and longlisted for the Gouden Uil Literature Prize 2008. The novel has as many chapters as there are European capital cities. It's a biting quest for personal happiness and a quest for the European soul.

‘Great European Novel est un très beau livre, modeste et ambitieux, souriant et grave, qui mérite d’être traduit dans tous les pays qu’il évoque.’
(Jacques de Decker dans Le Soir)

‘A revelation. Reading a story like this one makes you happy.’
(Alessandro Piperno in Corriere Della Serra)

'An ambitious and delicate novel: Europe as a precious mistake.'
(Arjan Peeters in de Volkskrant.)

English, French, Italian, Spanish and Bulgarian sample translations available.

Bulgarian rights Great European Novel (Koen Peeters) sold

Bulgarian rights for Koen Peeters' Great European Novel (Koen Peeters) are sold to Colibri Publishers.

Colibri is the most important Bulgarian publisher of classical and contemporary literature. Their list features Bulgarian translations of novels by Haruki Murakami, Paul Auster, JM Le Clézio, JM Coetzee, Philip Roth and many others.

Great European Novel was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2008 and longlisted for the Gouden Uil Literature Prize 2008. The novel has as many chapters as there are European capital cities. It's a biting quest for personal happiness and a quest for the European soul.

‘Great European Novel est un très beau livre, modeste et ambitieux, souriant et grave, qui mérite d’être traduit dans tous les pays qu’il évoque.’
(Jacques de Decker dans Le Soir)

‘A revelation. Reading a story like this one makes you happy.’
(Alessandro Piperno in Corriere Della Serra)

'An ambitious and delicate novel: Europe as a precious mistake.'
(Arjan Peeters in de Volkskrant.)

English, French, Italian, Spanish and Bulgarian sample translations available.

Rethinking Europe: Great European Novel

‘Great European Novel est un très beau livre, modeste et ambitieux, souriant et grave, qui mérite d’être traduit dans tous les pays qu’il évoque.’
(Jacques de Decker dans Le Soir)

‘A revelation. Reading a story like this one makes you happy.’
(Alessandro Piperno in Corriere Della Serra)

'An ambitious and delicate novel: Europe as a precious mistake.'
(Arjan Peeters in de Volkskrant.)

When it comes to Europe, most people nowadays are wary of pleading for a stronger union. But why not put the people first? Why not emphasize that Europe is a perpetual exchange of words, languages, experiences. Fortunately there are some ambitious authors who dare to put a complex issue like Europe at the service of literature, and vice versa. Koen Peeters is one of them. His Great European Novel is brilliant display of literary ingenuity and playfulness. Following the tradition of classical storytellers, Peeters weaves an web of relationships stretching each and every European capital, from Bern to Ankara, from Kopenhagen to Lissabon.

Great European Novel was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize 2008 and longlisted for the Gouden Uil Literature Prize 2008.

Translators and literary magazines all over Europe have been translating and publishing samples from Great European Novel. The most recent sample translation is the Bulgarian one, translated by Aneta Dantcheva-Manolova and published by Plamak Magazine.

English, French, Italian and Spanish sample translations are also available.

Great European Novel in Italian

Later this year parts of Great European Novel by Koen Peeters will be published in an Italian online anthology called La città europea contemporanea (The Contemporary European City). The online anthology will be published by Vibrisselibri.

Great European Novel shortlisted for Libris

The Great European Novel by Koen Peeters is shortlisted for this year's edition of the Libris prize. The book also figured on the longlist of the Gouden Uil literature prize 2008.

‘A revelation. Reading a story like this one makes you happy.’
Alessandro Piperno in Corriere Della Serra

Finally. After the Great American Novel we can now read the Great European Novel. A book with as many chapters as there are European capital cities. A biting quest for happiness. The Great European Novel describes how we, strangers, can find each another anyway in conference centres, airports and hotels. How we, Europeans, feel each other out with language. How some secrets can only be confided to people we’ve never met before or to people we’ll never meet again.
Robin is looking for all-consuming love, Theo is being driven along by his past. They work in marketing, advertising, promotional gifts. And Theo is Robin’s boss. One more contrast: Robin is promising and impatient, Theo is the wise, sad boss who has had everything. Yes, everything. They are businessmen. But ever since the Nine Eleven television pictures, showing ordinary office employees in New York covered in ashes or being lost in them, they are heroes.
In Prague Robin meets a golem, in Budapest he goes for a swim, in Warsaw he sleeps with Agnieszka. In Brussels Robin finally meets the one and only. The one and only? Yes, he finds the one and only in a volcanic way. In the mean time Theo’s secret is being revealed slowly but surely: an old war story. While the world is a flourishing place for Robin, it is slowly and tragically closing in on Theo.

Koen Peeters (1959) was awarded with the Nieuwe-Yangprijs for his debut Conversaties met K. Following that debut he wrote amongst others Bezoek onze kelders, De postbode (NCR-Prijs), Het is niet ernstig, mon amour (Prijs voor Letterkunde of the province Vlaams-Brabant), Acacialaan (longlist AKO Literatuurprijs) and Mijnheer Sjamaan. In 2005 his highly-praised poetic debut Fijne motoriek was published.