![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The term is in fact borrowed from Rebecca Walkowitz’s non-fiction work Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. In the middle – somewhere between the Dutch natives and the Anglophone visitors – sits a fascinating phenomenon: the ‘born translated’ author, as we might call him or her. In the Anglophone world, Amsterdam is most likely to be a destination in a broader narrative arc, from Ian McEwan’s eponymous title about a euthanasia pact, which won the Booker Prize in 1998, to Ian Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever (its screen version). But it is as if Holland hasn’t quite (yet) found its footing on the international crime map – certainly relative to those significantly less populous Scandinavian countries, just to the north. And let’s not forget those authors no longer with us, notably Janwillem van de Wetering. To be sure, Holland has excellent contemporary crime writers – Saskia Noort, say, or Charles den Tex. Keep going and you arrive in France, facing a feast of classic and contemporary crime writers: Dominique Manotti, Fred Vargas, Pierre Lemaitre … And of course to the east and south-south sits the German-language world of Ingrid Noll, Volker Kutscher, Nele Neuhaus, Martin Suter, and the list goes on. ![]() To the west, you can cross into Belgium and be in the birthplace of Simenon, author of the timeless Maigret stories. Holland lends itself just as well to the genre, with its equally liberal society, not to mention its settings – those great port cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam … ![]()
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