#david colmer

[roughghosts]

"How many lives go into a life?" Leaving by Cees Nooteboom, Drawings by Max Neumann

How many lives go into a life? Leaving by Cees Nooteboom, with drawing by Max Neumann @seagullbooks

A man standing in a winter garden becomes aware of something not quite right—a cloud that seems too heavy, bare branches against an ancient wall, the refusal of neighbouring geese—an unspoken uneasiness that carries his thoughts back to the war: The war that never stopped coming back, a guest who’s known to all, a toothless kiss, the language of intimate betrayal around him now again, remembering…

View On WordPress

[the-final-sentence]

'Let's go inside.'

Annie M.G. Schmidt, from The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof, trans. David Colmer

[roughghosts]

The reluctant barber: The Hairdresser’s Son by Gerbrand Bakker

Cut and shave, eat and drink, swim. Dead, unknown father, slightly hysterical mother. Never had a steady boyfriend. It was too easy, maybe, having an occupation thrown on his lap. He’d gone to hairdressing school, of course, but that didn’t mean it was something he wanted to do. That, in a nutshell, is Simon Weiman. The protagonist of Dutch writer Gerhard Bakker’s novel The Hairdresser’s Son, now…

View On WordPress

[onenakedfarmer]

Currently Reading

THE TWIN [Boven is het stil]

[Literal translation: Upstairs, all is quiet]

Gerbrand Bakker

Translated by David Colmer

[bookjotter6865]

BOOK REVIEW: An Untouched House

BOOK REVIEW: An Untouched House

by Willem Frederik Hermans

“…it was impossible to imagine ever having been capable of thinking things through; as automatically as if one’s deeds were the world’s thoughts.”

This short but powerful novella is a minacious reflection on the brutality of war by the Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans (1921-1995), whose most famous works include The House of Refuge (1952), The Darkroom of Damocles

View On WordPress

[tseadbruinja]

(Tsead Bruinja)

[lebateauivretmbl]

Book Review: The Man I Became by Peter Verhelst (Trans. by David Colmer)

Book Review: The Man I Became by Peter Verhelst (Trans. by David Colmer)

“We who had known the shifting sky as our ceiling our entire life, our only master the sun that set the red lake ablaze, the swarms of insects like tiny explosions over the water, our salvos of lazy laughter causing a frigate bird to linger over the crowns of the trees for a few seconds like a cloud of white feathers, the wall of muscle and teeth we formed in a flash at the slightest sign of…

View On WordPress

[bibliomancyoracle]

If you can decide whether or not to do something there must be something that allows you to see a difference.

*

from “More and More Freedom” by Nachoem M Wijnberg (translated by David Colmer)