Naturally I have identified tendencies in Dutch literature – the Calvinistic background, quiet introspection, naturalistic novels with few characters and little plot. The great writer W.F. Hermans criticised this tendency; ‘boring’ is how he labelled most Dutch novels.(2) An initiative by the Netherlands Embassy in London, in partnership with Flanders House, aims to send a wrecking ball at this cliché.

Six top Dutch-language writers will tour the UK from 14^th -19^th January 2013 in a project named ‘High Impact’, a rather incongruous name on first glance when thinking about that quiet introspection. The Dutch are usually shy of making an impact with their art or literature – those sticking their heads above the parapet tend to be knocked down – but perhaps things are changing.

I contacted the Embassy to enquire about the thinking behind High Impact and heard back from Jan van Weijen, head of the pleasingly-named Department of Dutchness. This is what he said:“Flanders and The Netherlands have an extensive common cultural heritage and share a language, Dutch. Its literature is vibrant and encapsulates a sea breeze. Outward-looking and incorporating foreign influences, it clearly matches an UK audience.” I also talked to the tour’s curator, international literature specialist Rosie Goldsmith and she said, “the Dutch and Flemish are honestly up there with the best. It is always a pleasure to interview them, not only because they speak excellent English but because I believe our countries and cultures share a great affinity.”

So: vibrant, outward-looking, multicultural, with an affinity to the UK? Let’s take a look at the writers involved and what kind of impact they might have. Flemish writer Peter Terrin, who recently won the top Dutch literary prize, the AKO, with his latest novel Post Mortem, works with a filleting knife more than a hammer; his novels are dark, cool, composed affairs. The prize-winning novel, which will be published in 2014 by MacLehose Press, is a study of the impotence of writing in the face of personal tragedy; it is a post-modern puzzle, demonstrating his technical mastery. Wielding a sabre is Ramsey Nasr, just coming to the end of his term as Dutch Poet Laureate. Nasr is half-Palestinian, half-Dutch and knows how to thrill with special effects. His poems are audacious, bombastic, colourful affairs. The collection Heavenly Bodies, published by Banipal provides a good taster of his work.

Herman Koch is practically a household name now, after his international hit The Dinner. A comedian and actor as well as a writer, he makes his impact with humour. Covering the non-fiction field, there is Belgian writer Lieve Joris who has written extensively on Africa and has now turned her hand to China. Her forthcoming book on the commercial relationship between China and Africa sounds immensely promising and will certainly add to the debate. Geert Mak  will join the last two days of the tour. His magnum opus, In Europe, Travels Through the Twentieth Century brought him international recognition. ‘Mak’s artful interleaving of personal stories with epic events is a constant reminder of the human scale of history’ wrote The New Yorker.

Chika Unigwe hails from Nigeria but has made her home in Antwerp. I have just finished reading On Black Sister’s Street, published by Jonathan Cape, a Dickensian novel telling the story of four African prostitutes trying to make new lives for themselves in Antwerp. The novel has a tragic ending and the characters remind me of some of Lieve Joris´s studies. Last but not least, Judith Vanistendael will showcase her artistic talents. Both of her graphic novels have been published in English by selfmadehero. The first, Dance to the Light of the Moon is an autobiographical telling of her relationship with a Togolese asylum seeker; it is as incisive and evocative as her second, When David Lost His Voice, a cancer story.  Her novels have great emotional impact.

The tour’s creators are right, you’d be wrong to expect quiet introspection from this selection of the best that the Low Countries have to offer at the moment. And the Dutch, with their expertise in export are sensible to join together with the Flemish to focus on exporting their common cultural riches.

The High Impact tour will take place from 14th-19th January 2013 and stops in Oxford, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Norwich and London. See highimpacttour.com. or follow my live blogs from the tour on Twitter: @HighImpactTour and Facebook community: High Impact.

About the Author
Michele Hutchison (Solihull, 1972) worked in publishing in the UK before moving to the Netherlands in 2004. She now works as an editor at a Dutch literary publishing house and as a freelance translator. Writers she has translated include Joris Luyendijk, Rob Riemen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Simone van der Vlugt.

Additional Links
Interview with Sam Garrett on translating The Dinner: www.letterenfonds.nl.

Michele Hutchison on Herman Koch, author of The Dinner, for PEN Atlas

Notes

1. “‘The 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature should go to the Netherlands’ – a misconception of national proportions” in De Gids, issue 5/6.
2. “Unsympathetic Characters”, in Dutch Literary Journal, vol 4, 2013

The post High Impact from the Low Countries appeared first on English PEN.

A name most frequently brought up in relation to the theory is Kazuo Ishiguro, who has admitted he aims to write a plainer kind of prose that translates easily; I fear he may have instigated this whole shebang. Other prime examples are Orhan Pamuk who has been accused of neatly condensing and packaging Turkishness for a foreign audience (in cahoots with his translator, apparently) and Salman Rushdie who might have capitalised on a version of Indianness aimed to exoticise and to sell books. Both these writers are seen as writing for a global audience, moving away from the local and specific, sometimes provoking political controversy by being ‘unfaithful to’ or ‘betraying’ their roots.

Tim Parks who teaches at IULM, has also proposed lesser-known writers for this trend, such as the excellent Swiss and Dutch writers, Peter Stamm and Gerbrand Bakker, because of their pared-down writing style and lack of culture-specific politics. I guess he would add Flemish writer Peter Terrin, recently published in English by MacLehose Press, if he read him. His claustrophobic, existential novel The Guard is set in a non-specific European urban apartment building in the near future and written in a wilfully clinical style. It subtly references Camus, Beckett and the Belgian surrealists, but always remains compelling and direct.

The obvious counter-argument is that the market might select precisely those books that do speak to an international readership and translate un-problematically (i.e. do not require explanatory footnotes). It is certainly the view I hold and matches my experience of pitching Dutch books to foreign editors. Editors like books which give a sense of the place they are set in without the reader getting bogged down in specifics. They also look for accessibility and universal themes. Commerce dictates a particular formula. Look at the kinds of novels that have proved hugely successful in translation, in particular the crime wave from Scandinavia: Stieg Larsson, Hening Mankell, Karin Fossum, Jo Nesbo, plot-driven thrillers with a cool, slightly spooky setting.

Peter Stamm was at the conference and was given the chance to air his views on the subject. He began by explaining that being Swiss means having a complex, diffuse identity. The Swiss do not need a national literature to define who they are. ‘Books don’t take place in nations, but in the mind.’ On his style, he said that he deliberately avoids Helveticisms, he likes neutral language with no colouring so that images can easily form in the readers’ minds. He travels a lot and so his novels are set in other Western locations – Paris, Munich, Chicago and Norway, yet ‘Swiss life’ is contained in most of his books in some way.

Some of Stamm’s thoughts were echoed by Mexican writer, Jorge Volpi, who claimed similarly that, ‘all novels take place in imaginary space’. His own novels are set in Germany, France and the US. It was only when he was published in Spain that he realised, to his great surprise, that he was considered ‘an exotic Mexican writer’. He repeatedly had to defend himself against the question – why had a Mexican written about Germany. The only possible answer was: why not? This points to a second requirement, potentially at odds with the globalisation trend – authenticity. Apparently one can only write authentically about what one knows. Commercially successful literature might then walk a tightrope between the local and the global, packaging the local as universal. What this means for Volpi and others daring to write about things not connected to their ‘roots’ remains to be seen.

About the Author

Michele Hutchison (Solihull, 1972) worked in publishing in the UK before moving to the Netherlands in 2004. She now works as an editor at a Dutch literary publishing house and as a freelance translator. Writers she has translated include Joris Luyendijk, Rob Riemen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Simone van der Vlugt.

The post Walking the Tightrope: Globalisation and Localism appeared first on English PEN.