A husband forms gruesome plans for his new fridge; a government employee has a haunting experience on his commute home; prisoners serve as entertainment for wealthy party guests; an army officer suffers a monstrous tropical illness.
Joost Zwagerman (1963-2015) was a novelist, poet, essayist and editor of several anthologies. He started his career as a writer with bestselling novels, describing the atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Gimmick! (1988) and False Light (1991). In later years, he concentrated on writing essays - notably on pop culture and visual arts - and poetry. Suicide was the theme of the novel Six Stars (2002). He took his own life just after having published a new collection of essays on art, The Museum of Light.
Forms a loose narrative - both historical and literary - of the
twentieth century...watching the decades roll by in this
looking-glass world, familiar yet strange, is one of the book's
chief pleasures...the stories here will provoke, delight and
impress. Joost Zwagerman's selection forms a fascinating guidebook
to a landscape you'll surely want to wander in again.
*TLS*
There is a lot of northern European melancholy in the collection,
though they are often tinged with wry humour...The Second World War
and Dutch colonialism also cast their shadows on these stories.
Unblemished comedy is in short supply. And you have to ask: is this
gloominess a reflection on the Dutch temperament, or on the present
selection?... An excellent book
*Minor Literatures*
An affectionate love-letter to the Dutch short story which deserves
to be cherished by all
*TN2 Magazine, Trinity College Dublin*
the range of stories, styles and authors means you can happily
plunge in free of preconceptions and rarely find
yourself disappointed. Similar anthologies can vary wildly in
quality but The Penguin Book Of Dutch Short Stories keeps the bar
high throughout mainly because, it seems, Zwagerman chose to
include stories he admired on merit rather than making sure a list
of boxes were ticked...
*New European*
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