Best European Novels: Belgium

Belgium is a small country in the heart of Europe: just over 30,000 square kilometers and a population of 11.5 million. Located at the meeting point of Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium has benefited from a cross-fertilization of cultures for centuries, and has been at the center of many European artistic movements. Its strategic location also meant that Belgium served as the battleground for several European wars, most fatally WWI, but also the famous Battle of Waterloo of 1815 in which Napoleon was finally defeated. (As Tom Lanoye has phrased it in Speechless: "You can't have a much better position in Europe, except when war breaks out.")

The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp (a large European port city), Ghent (another port and economic powerhouse), Liège (a traditional industrial center in Wallonia), historic town Bruges and university town Leuven. Brussels is also the capital of Europe as it hosts several EU-connected organs, such as the European Commission and the European Parliament.

As is well-known, Belgium is home to two main linguistic communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemish community (about 60 percent of the population) and the French-speaking community (Brussels and Wallonia). But the Flemish are not Dutch and the Walloons are not French, they have their own identities. In the northeastern corner of Belgium is also a small area where German is spoken (see the novel The Angel Maker below). Belgium's linguistic diversity has led to a complex system of politics and governance. It is sometimes joked that Belgium is not a country, but a compromise.

Belgium controlled two colonies during its history, of which the major one was the Belgian Congo (modern DRC), a huge country - 76 times larger than Belgium itself (comparable to the mismatched sizes of The Netherlands and its colony the Dutch-Indies). The colony originally was the personal property of the country's king, Leopold II, and is infamous for the cruelty against the local population which led to international protests at the time - as well as to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Well-known elements of Belgian culture include painting (from the Flemish Renaissance and Baroque painting - Rubens - to modern Surrealism as exemplified by Magritte), gastronomy (Belgian beer, chocolates, waffles), and a strong comic strip tradition (Tintin  - by Herge, one of the most translated writers in the world - , the Smurfs, etc.).

The Belgian character is characterized by conservatism, intellectual humility, avoidance of dogmatism, common sense and compromise. The Flemish are more egalitarian, consensual and low key, among the Walloons hierarchy and rank is more important.

Belgian literature is therefore also split into two languages. Note that there are minor differences in vocabulary and semantic nuances between Flemish and Dutch as spoken in the Netherlands; the same is true of French. There is a lot of talent writing in both languages. The "Big Three" 20th c. classical novelists from Flanders are Willem Elsschot, Louis Paul Boon and Hugo Claus. The greatest Belgian who wrote in French (and therefore was often wrongly thought to be a Frenchman) was Georges Simenon. In fact, Simenon used often Belgian and Dutch settings in his novels, especially in the 1930s, such as in his semi-autobiographical Pedigree.

Belgian Francophone literature is sometimes difficult to distinguish from French literature as a whole, because several great French authors sought refuge in  Belgium (Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine) and, conversely, top French-speaking writers sometimes settle in Paris (Simenon, Nothomb). But Belgian Francophone literature is squarely Belgian in character thanks to sharing the traits which are representative of all Belgian literature.

Of the ten Nobel Prizes won by Belgians, one was in literature: Maurice Maeterlinck in 1911, but Francophone Maeterlinck was a poet and a playwright, not a novelist.

Characteristic themes of Belgian literature are:
- Catholic influence in life and education
- World War I and II
- The inability to transcend personal or societal limitations
- Use of black humor and self-derision
- Absurdism and magic-realism

The rules I have followed are:
(1) English translations must exist (it may be out of print, in which case you'll have to try the sellers at Amazon etc., or a good library)
(2) Every writer is represented by only one book (to prevent me from spamming the list with my favorites)
(3) One of the selection criteria is "sense of place," meaning that I have a preference for books that bring the reader closer to the country under consideration.
(4) Besides "high literature," I also include a few "genre novels" (usually thrillers or mysteries), as these can give a good insight in the culture of a particular country.

Useful websites:
Dutch Foundation for Literature: http://www.letterenfonds.nl/en/
Digital Library for Dutch Literature: https://www.dbnl.org/
Flanders Literature: https://www.flandersliterature.be/ 

I recommend checking out the various places mentioned in these novels via Google Maps or Wikipedia for a virtual trip!

Here are the best novels from Belgium (all novels have been translated into English):

1. Jacques Rodenbach, Bruges-la-Morte (1892) [French]
A man is obsessed with the memory of his deceased wife and tries to mold a dancer, who uncannily resembles her, after his wife. "Bruges-la-Morte," by the Belgian Francophone author Georges Rodenbach is a melancholic novel about an obsessive love, a love both for a beautiful dead wife and a beautiful dead town, Bruges (in the 19th c. Bruges had become an antiquarian town; that has changed today as it has been revived by trade and tourism). It is the novel of a poet, in which almost nothing happens, the reader is as it were incarnated in the lonely soul of the protagonist. "Bruges-La-Morte" is also the iconic Symbolist novel.

Something that is very modern is that this is the first novel to incorporate dozens of black-and-white photographs (as for example contemporary German author W.G. Sebald has done). The photos show mostly deserted streets and canals. Although they are an integral part of the novel, most modern editions leave them out – the English translation has replaced them with new photos. Only the original images, however, have a truly haunting quality. (Detailed review on this blog)

Georges Rodenbach (1855-98) was a Belgian Symbolist poet and novelist. Rodenbach had a French mother and a German father and studied in Ghent. He belonged to the circle of the poet Emile Verhaeren and published eight collections of poetry and four novels, besides a number of short stories. He spent the last ten years of his life in Paris, where he became an intimate of Edmond de Goncourt. His best work is Bruges-la-Morte, in which he tries to evoke the town as a living being, associated with the moods of the spirit. Bruges-la-Morte was adapted by the Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold as his famous opera Die tote Stadt.

2. Willem Elsschot, Cheese (Kaas, 1933) [Dutch]
Willem Elsschot (1882-1960; in real life called Alfons de Ridder) was a writer and businessman (in advertising) from Antwerp, who because of the combination of these two functions, has been dubbed the “Flemish Italo Svevo.” He wrote eleven short novels, of which the highly amusing Cheese (Kaas) is the best, a gentle fable, timeless in its skewering of the pretensions and pomposity of the urban bourgeois.

[Statue of Elsschot in Antwerp]

A humble shipping clerk in Antwerp becomes the chief agent in Belgium for a Dutch cheese company and takes delivery of ten thousand full-cream wheels of this red-rinded Dutch delight. But he has no idea how to run a business, or how to sell his goods. He is more focused on setting up his office with a proper desk and typewriter, rather than doing the hard-selling that is needed. When his employer comes to Antwerp to settle the first accounts, he panics... (Detailed review on this blog)

Soft Soap and The Leg (Lijmen / Het Been) are two more examples of humorous novels by Elsschot which lead the reader to reflect on the absurdity of life.

3. Jean Ray, Malpertuis (1943) [French]
Malpertuis purports to be a series of manuscripts written at different times by various hands, but all relating to a man named Cassave and an ancient house called Malpertuis. The prologue involves a sea voyage, and a mysterious island. We then move on to the main narrative, written by one Jean-Jacques Grandsire. He tells about the death of the patriarch of the house of Malpertuis, Uncle Cassave, who in his will stipulates that the assorted relatives, hangers-on, and servants must all live in Malpertuis if they want to inherit his large fortune. It is a strange lot of people that is gathered there, but the eerie building is stranger. Events occur that are so bizarre that Jean-Jacques doubts his own sanity. Even worse, he is uncertain whether he can trust any of the others – not even the enigmatically beautiful Euryale (perhaps Euryale least of all, but he cannot help but feel the strong fascination she exerts with her green eyes and red hair). Then Jean-Jacques’ narrative breaks off, and additional information is furnished by an abbot, whose ancestor was partly responsible for setting the original events in motion, and by an elderly monk whose monastery may hold some of the answers needed to reveal the truth. What are the inhabitants of Malpertuis - demons, madmen, or mental figments? In fact they are none of these but neither are they quite human… A weird and hypnotic novel, that deserves to be better known.

The novel was filmed in 1971 by Harry Kümel with Orson Welles, Susan Hampshire, Michel Bouquet and Mathieu Carrière in the leading roles.

[Poster for the film Malpertuis]

Jean Ray (1887-1964) was the most famous author of fantastic literature in Belgium. His real name was Jean Raymond de Kremer. He began his career as a pulp writer, using a variety of aliases. His large output can be divided into three parts. Under his own name, he wrote many short stories, which were collected in a number of volumes, and have since become horror classics, and two novels, Malpertuis and La Cité de l'Indicible Peur [The City Of The Unspeakable Fear] (both 1943). These works were all written in French. Under the name of "John Flanders" Ray wrote (often in Dutch) a number of juvenile adventure novels, many incorporating science fiction or fantasy elements, as well as an estimated 300 stories. The third part of Ray's literary output was in pulp magazines and includes an unauthorized Sherlock Holmes pastiche, Harry Dickson, sub-titled "the American Sherlock Holmes."

4. Georges Simenon, Pedigree (1948) [French]
At his death, Liegeoise writer Georges Simenon (1903–1989) had published over 375 works, including 75 novels and 28 short stories in his fictional detective series featuring Inspector Maigret. The Maigret series has been translated into over 50 languages, making the Belgian Simenon the most translated French-speaking author in the world. More than that, Simenon also wrote more than a 100 serious novels, called "romans durs." These "hard novels" were not detective stories but darkly realistic psychological novels, books in which he displayed a sympathetic awareness of the emotional and spiritual pain underlying the routines of daily life. Some famous titles are: Dirty Snow, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, Pedigree, Tropic Moon, The Engagement, The Blue Room, The Widow and Red Lights. In the "romans durs" Simenon tried to display the full range of his talent, often addressing existentialist themes.

[Rue Léopold in Liège where the novel starts (and where Simenon was born)]

Pedigree is a semi-autobiographical novel, described by the author as "a book in which everything is true but nothing is accurate." It presents a fictionalized account of the author's childhood in the Walloon industrial center of Liège, from the start of the twentieth century to the end of World War I. At the center stands the mother, Élise (in real life: Henriette), tormented and tormenting, “a girl from the other side of the bridges, a girl who, when she was with her sisters, spoke a language (Flemish) nobody could understand." She is married to Désiré Mamelin, a stolid insurance clerck, who so much adores routine that he sometimes seems more mechanism than man. Husband and wife are very much our of sync - he with his fixed routines, she the continuous prey of her changing emotions. The book starts with the birth of their baby (called Roger); as he grows up and his character of a precocious and curious boy emerges, the focus will gradually shift from the mother to him. Spanning the years from the beginning of the century, with its political instability and terrorist threats, to 1918, Pedigree is an intense account of everyday existence in all its messiness. Simenon deftly brings the sounds, sights and smells of that existence to life, from coals falling in the stove, the tram giving off sparks as it passes, to gas jets being lit. It is the vivid evocation of the sensate world that makes Simenon such an extraordinary novelist.

5. Louis Paul Boon, Chapel Road (Kapellekensbaan, 1953) [Dutch]
Louis Paul Boon (1912-1979) was a Flemish novelist and journalist who was a serious candidate for the Nobel prize in Literature. He gave up literary language for regional Belgian Dutch words and expressions with which he colored his writing in a Faulknerian way. Boon combines social engagement (an important characteristic of Belgian literature) with advanced literary techniques. Chapel Road is his masterpiece. Its interesting avant-garde-like construction combines several narrative threads, including an almost postmodern one where the writer and his friends discuss how the story should develop further.

[Town center, Aalst]

The story itself is set in the 19th c. and is about a young woman who wants to escape from a grey industrial town "where it is always raining, even when the sun is shining" (the town is a fictionalized Aalst, the town where Boon himself grew up). A third thread in the book is a reworking of the classic myth of Reynard the Fox.

Boon’s other famous novels, both available in English, are My little war (Mijn kleine oorlog) and a sequel to Chapel Road, Summer in Termuren (Zomer in Termuren).

6. Hubert Lampo, The Coming of Joachim Stiller (De komst van Joachim Stiller, 1960) [Dutch]
A series of mysterious occurrences in 1950s Antwerp and in the life of journalist-writer Freek Groenevelt, disrupting his calm and orderly life: a street is broken up and closed again, but the alderman of Public Works denies Freek's newspaper report. Then comes a letter from one Joachim Stiller posted in 1919 (!) that predicts the above incident. Freek visits Simone Marijnissen, the editor of a small literary magazine, who has also received a letter from Stiller, and who suspects it was sent by Freek. Simone later receives a mysterious phone call from a man calling himself "Stiller." In his favorite second-hand bookstore Freek finds a 16th c. book about "the end of time," authored by one Joachim Stiller. And so on. The mysterious Joachim Stiller becomes an obsession for Freek Groenevelt, until Stiller finally appears as the archetype of the redeemer, acting out the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is an easy read, perhaps a bit too much so, at the expense of character development, so literary critics have not always been kind to the novel. My own criticism concerns the character of Simone, and the mutual love at first sight between her and Freek Groenevelt. She is just a "type" ("the ideal woman," a purely male fantasy), and not a full character; when she starts living together with Freek, she immediately disappears into the kitchen as a dutiful 1950s housewife (and expectant mother). What I liked best about the novel is the atmosphere of Antwerp, with its many cafes, and the long walks of Freek through the old city.

 

[Antwerp's South Station, where the final scene of the novel takes place
(the station building was demolished in 1965)]

Despite these small shortcomings, this novel is generally regarded as one of the classics of postwar Flemish literature. Hubert Lampo (1920-2006) was the founder of magic realism in literature in Flanders (in painting it existed already, in the famous works of Magritte). Joachim Stiller was central to Lampo's oeuvre; the novel was filmed in 1976 and during the life of the author 44 editions and numerous translations appeared.

7. Hugo Claus, The Sorrow of Belgium (Het verdriet van België, 1983) [Dutch]
The Sorrow of Belgium is a semi-autobiographical "bildungsroman," the story of the coming of age of the protagonist in a conservative, Flemish nationalist family during the German occupation in WWII. We follow the life of the young Louis Seynave and his family in the 1930s and 1940s in the community of Kortrijk. Claus' family novel is, among other things, a study of everyday low-level collaboration. Many Flemish felt sympathy for the occupier because they thought the Germans could give the Flemish struggle for emancipation a favorable turn. But most of all they just cared for their own small material needs (as most people would do in a similar situation) - in everything they see a threat to their already poor prosperity and they want to preserve the status quo of their lives. They do not recognize the German danger.

[German parade past the Royal Palace in Brussels
shortly after the invasion, May 1940]

Hugo Claus (1929-2008) has been dubbed the most important Flemish writer of the 20th century. He has written over 20 novels, 60 theater pieces and thousands of poems. Unfortunately, very little has been translated into English, and what has been translated is difficult to find. Claus' best novel The Sorrow of Belgium has been compared to The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass.

8. Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Monsieur (1986) [French]
Jean-Philippe Toussaint (born 1957) is a Belgian writer and filmmaker, who was educated in Paris. He was influenced by Beckett and the Nouveau Roman. Monsieur, which was filmed by Toussaint himself in 1990, is typical of his work. It is a minimalist series of vignettes from the life of an introverted, quiet man who lacks any strong interests or will power. At the office, he has perfected the art of doing nothing, and at home, he is no less undistinguished. His neighbor persuades Monsieur to spend his free time typing a treatise of mineralogy under his dictation, and the only way Monsieur is able to escape that servitude is to move in with his fiancée’s parents. He is still living in their home long after his fiancée has found a man more to her liking. But in the end, another young woman finds a soulmate in Monsieur, leading Toussaint to conclude that life, for Monsieur, is mere "child’s play." In other words, although he is utterly passive, Monsieur still manages to keep his head above water and seems always content. You might compare him to the "uncarved block" of Daoism, while his way of life embodies the idea from the Daodejing that the qualities of flexibility and suppleness, especially as exemplified by water, are superior to rigidity and strength. Nothing happens in this novel, but Toussaint manages to keep his readers interested. In his quirkiness, Monsieur Toussaint also has some traits of that other nay-sayer, Melville's Bartleby. You could also call him the true "man without qualities."

We find similar types in Toussaint's other novels, such as a man who wishes nothing else than to spend the rest of his life in his bathtub, or a man who organizes imaginary international dart tournaments in his hotel room, and keeps playing his solitary games until little Belgium finally wins. Some other titles are The Bathroom, The Camera, Reticence, Television, and Making Love.

9. Pieter Aspe, The Square of Revenge (Het vierkant van de wraak, 1995) [Dutch]
The beautiful medieval town of Bruges (also appearing in Bruges-La-Morte above) here features in quite a different context, that of a mystery in which the dark longings of her residents are revealed. When the wealthy and influential Degroof’s jewelry store is broken into, nothing is stolen, but all the jewels are dissolved in strong acid. In the empty safe a scrap of paper is discovered on which a strange square has been drawn. Degroof is less concerned about solving the case than preventing details about the crime from getting out. Police inspector Van In quickly determines it was an act of revenge for something that happened years ago. When Degroof’s grandson is kidnapped, Van In and the beautiful new prosecutor Hannelore Martens find themselves unraveling a complex web of intrigue and dirty family secrets. They must cut through bureaucratic resistance to learn why one of Degroof's daughters has been institutionalized and another is in a nunnery. Besides clever plotting and brisk pacing, it is the light-hearted bantering of Van In and Hannelore (which slowly develops into a romance) that carries the book.

[The Steenstraat, Bruges' major shopping street,
where the fictional jewelry store in the novel is located]

Pieter Aspe, who himself lives in Bruges, is the author of a series detective stories starring inspector Van In, of which The Square of Revenge is the first novel.

10. Stefan Brijs, The Angel Maker (De engelenmaker, 2005) [Dutch]
The Angel Maker is set in the (fictional) village of Wolfheim, in the German-speaking community of east Belgium, at the border with The Netherlands and Germany and Luxembourg. Wolfheim is located in the northern part of this area, close to the Vaalserberg (in the Dutch province of Limburg) and the Three Country Point, where tourists can stand on a spot where the borders of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium meet. The village of Wolfheim is a quiet place until the geneticist Dr. Victor Hoppe returns after an absence of nearly twenty years to the house where his parents had lived. The doctor, an autistic, monomaniac eccentric, brings with him his infant children: three identical-looking boys all sharing a disturbing disfigurement (a cleft palate), like the doctor himself. The doctor sets up his practice but the boys remain hidden from view - they don't play outside, they aren't sent to school. The villagers are curious about these odd-looking children with the exact same cleft palates and large, bald heads. Charlotte, the woman who is hired to care for them, finally begins to suspect that the triplets (as well as the doctor himself) aren’t quite what they seem...

[The Vaalserberg and Three Country Point (between The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany), where the dramatic finale of the novel takes place]

The Angel Maker is about genetic engineering and the cloning of humans, of assuming the same power as God, like a contemporary Frankenstein. But Victor Hoppe hates the cruel god of the Old Testament who after all created beings with defective genes that cause immense suffering, and for good measure even added some viruses to the mix of misery. Instead, Victor identifies strongly with Jesus - to what a degree will become clear at the shocking end of this mysterious and chilling novel.

Stefan Brijs (1969) was born in Genk and studied to become a teacher; since 1999 he is a full-time writer. De engelenmaker reached its 25th printing in Dutch in 2011, selling over 125,000 copies. It has been translated into more than ten languages. It is a book that can be read on many levels: as a Frankenstein-type horror story - there is a sense of dread and doom (and typically Belgian absurdity) throughout the book - but also as a morality tale (the ethics of DNA engineering and cloning), an (anti-) religious parable (how can god be "good" as he has created beings with defective genes?), and a meditation about the problem that science is cold and without empathy. In how far may science make us suffer for its advancement?

11. Dimitri Verhulst, The Misfortunates (De Helaasheid der Dingen, 2006) [Dutch]
Dimitri Verhulst was born in Aalst, like the elder author Louis Paul Boon, with whom he shares a critical but compassionate view of Belgian life. Verhulst’s most famous novel is The Misfortunates, a fictional autobiography of a young writer growing up in a family "that knew no sobriety or moderation" (to put it mildly). Both his father and his three uncles, useless in all other aspects, had an unwavering commitment to beer and the pub - and an inclination to violence. As soon as the narrator is born, his father plucks him from the maternity ward, props him on his bike, and takes him on an introductory tour of the village bars. The boy grows up amid the stench of stale beer, and it seems that the same fate is waiting for him, until he makes his own plans for the future. The blackest of black humor and extremely politically incorrect - not everyone can stomach this avalanche of crude language and unappetizing bodily functions - read at your own risk. But nothing could be more Belgian (Flemish) than this type of humor.

[Grote Markt with church and cafe in Aalst]

Dimitri Verhulst (born in 1972) was an unwanted child in a violent family (described by him as "there was an incredible amount of fighting at home, the pints flew through the living room, there was always aggression in the air (…) we were the losers, the knife fighters" - as in The Misfortunates). At age 12 he was evicted by his mother and ended up in a family replacement home. Wanting to stand on his own two feet as soon as possible, he worked as a pizza delivery boy, tourist guide on pleasure boats, and 'pigeon shit scraper' on churches. His first novel was published in 1994. Another well-known novel by Verhulst is Problemski hotel (2003), about a center for asylum seekers. Dimitri Verhulst reminds me of another modern Belgian author, Herman Brusselmans (1957), who is just as controversial for his profane language and offensive comedy (and just as popular in Flanders). Unfortunately, there are no English translations available of Brusselmans' many books.

12. Amélie Nothomb, Tokyo Fiancée (Ni d'Eve, ni d'Adam, 2007) [French]
Amélie Nothomb was born in Japan of Belgian parents in 1967. In fact, her father was the Consul-General for Belgium in Kobe (later also Ambassador in Tokyo). Despite her background in a diplomatic family, in her public persona and her writing Nothomb is the embodiment of unconventionality. Since her debut with Hygiene and the Assassin in 1992, she has written a novel a year (of the concise French type, it should be admitted). She has been widely translated and won many prizes. One of her best novels is Tokyo Fiancée, in which an affair with a Japanese suitor, Rinri, serves as the impetus for fun discoveries about the Japanese way of life, especially food culture. Rinri is really in love, and although Amélie likes spending time with him, she doesn't love him. She also doesn't want to give up her independence. After he proposes, she struggles with the question how to best refuse this sweet and shy boy. (Detailed review on this blog)

Another excellent book set in Japan is the popular Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements), in which a Belgian woman returns to Japan, where she lived as a child, for a job at one of the country's major corporations. The cultural misunderstandings pile up like a train wreck until the woman (again called Amélie - both novels are semi-autobiographical) gives up trying to adapt to the Japanese way of working.

13. Tom Lanoye, Speechless (Sprakeloos, 2009) [Dutch]
"And this is the story of a stroke, devastating as an internal lightning bolt, and of the agonizingly slow decline that over the next two years afflicted  a five-fold mother and first-class amateur actress." Sprakeloos begins with this sentence, in which Tom Lanoye sketches a portrait of his mother Josée Verbeke, a butcher's wife and amateur actress, and - in good Catholic style - mother of five (of which Tom was the youngest). After a rich life in and above the butcher's shop in Sint-Niklaas, she was hit by a cerebral infarction and eventually ended up in a nursing home before her heart gave out. Her son, the author, is shocked by her loss of speech, which – as an amateur actress – had been so dear to her. In compensation – and as a homage – he reconstructs her life in an abundance of language. Josée is depicted as a flamboyant, domineering and controlling woman who, investing great effort in her family and their butcher’s shop, always strove for everyone’s respectability, reputation and well-being, resorting, from time to time, to dramatic scenes and shrewd manipulation. Lanoye tells of the ups and downs of family life in a good-natured, humorous fashion. He also makes up the balance of his own colorful youth in a working-class neighborhood, of his struggle with love, of his role as a writer, and of the conflicts with his diva-like mother.

[The market place in Sint-Niklaas, where the novel is set - "the largest market square - if you like, the largest empty space - in the whole of Europe"]

Tom Lanoye (1958), the "butcher’s son with glasses" (part of his identity and the title of his prose debut), was born in Sint-Niklaas in East Flanders. He studied Germanic Philology and Sociology at Ghent University, before becoming a novelist, poet, columnist, screenwriter and internationally respected playwright. Lanoye lives and works in Antwerp and Cape Town (South Africa). His literary work has been published and/or performed in over fifteen languages; in 2013 he received the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his whole oeuvre. Lanoye a rich and masterful prose.

14. Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine (Oorlog en terpentijn, 2013) [Dutch]
War and Turpentine is based on a pair of notebooks Stefan Hertmans received in the 1980s from his grandfather Urbain Martien, who had fought in WWI. The novel reconstructs the grandfather's life, which began in a working-class neighborhood in Ghent during the belle époque and took an unforeseen turn at the outbreak of WWI, when Urbain was 23 years old and had to go to the front. When the troops withdraw from the German advance, they end up in the trenches behind the flooded Yzer plain. The horrors of war are poignantly described 'up close' - as in that other trenches-novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. In a short final part, the story takes a tragic turn when Urbain's beloved dies in the pandemic of the Spanish flu.

[Belgian machine gunner in WWI]

Stefan Hertmans (1951) was born in Ghent. His poems and stories have been published in French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Croatian, German, Bulgarian. For the present novel Hertmans received the AKO Literature Prize 2014.

15. Annelies Verbeke, Thirty Days (Dertig dagen, 2015) [Dutch]
This novel is set in Westhoek, a corner of West Flanders between the French border and the North Sea, in the extreme southwest of Belgium. There is not much else in this rural area except grim reminders of WWI (more WWI graves than anywhere else in Europe), a high suicide rate, and lots of pensioners. But there are also wide low skies and open fields. The protagonist Alphonse Badji is an immigrant from Senegal who, after an initial career as a musician in Brussels, has started a new life as a handyman in this quiet corner, together with his girlfriend Cat whose retired parents live in the area. As Alphonse paints the interior of people's homes, they open up to him about their problems - their complex emotional lives, their affairs, messy divorces, small cruelties and family quarrels. Alphonse is a good and patient listener and tries to help his fellow human beings - like a "handyman of the soul." In the end, Alphonse also helps a group of Afghan refugees living in old WWI trenches (wishing to cross over to England, as this is close to the French port of Calais), and here his kindness unfortunately leads to disaster for himself. Every chapter describes a day in the life of Alphonse, starting with 30 and counting down. The novel touches on current social issues such as migration and discrimination, but does not get lost in simplifications. The book won the Bordewijk Prize 2015.

[WWI cemetery near Ypres in Westhoek]

Annelies Verbeke (1976) studied language and literature at Gent University. In 2003, she gained instant fame with her first novel Slaap! (Sleep!), which with translations in 22 countries became the most widely translated Flemish debut of all time. Verbeke writes with sympathy and humor about the underdog; her keenly observed characters are familiar in their ordinariness, but also have a dark and unexpected side. There is an absurdist feel to her work - "typically Belgian," as I would like to say.