Belgium 🇧🇪
Stefan Hertmans (1951) is a Flemish Belgian author, poet and essayist. His biography reads like a “bildungsroman”. From teacher to jazz musician to professor and writer’s writer to Belgian State Prize Laureate and major international success.
He is the author of a literary and essayistic oeuvre – including poetry, novels, essays, plays, short stories. His poetry has been translated into various languages, he has taught at the Ghent Secondary Art Institute and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent аnd in 1983 he has been part of the Struga poetry evenings.
He has given lectures at the Sorbonne University, the universities of Vienna, Berlin and Mexico City, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and University College London. His work has been published in The literary Review (Madison) The Review of contemporary fiction (Illinois) and Grand Street (New York).
He received the triennial Flemish Poetry Prize in 1995. His novel “War and Turpentine” (2012 a novel based on his grandfather's notebooks recollecting his time before, during and after the First World War) won both the ECI Literature Prize and the Flemish Cultural Award for Literature, and was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize, The Golden Book Owl and the Davidsfonds History Prize аnd was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. English translation of the book chosen as a book of the year in The Times, Sunday Times and The Economist and as one of the ten best books of 2016 in the New York Times.
Stefan received the prestigious E. du Perron Prize for his novel, “The Convert” (2016). For “The Convert” was nominated for the Jewish Book Award, and for ‘The ascent’, which has just been released. The three novels form a trilogy where fact en fiction intermingle.
De bekeerlinge (Тhe Convert)
Translation: Elizabeta Božinoska
In a small town in Provence, people have spoken of an ancient pogrom and a hidden chest since time immemorial. Stefan Hertmans has based The Convert on historical fact, and he traces the life of a distinguished Christian noblewoman who abandons her life for the love of a Jewish boy.
At the dawn of the Crusades, 17-year-old Vigdis Adelaïs, the daughter of a semi-cultivated Norman living in Rouen, one day passes by the Jews' quarter and catches sight of David Todros, the son of the chief rabbi of Narbonne. Despite her father's criticism and encouragement of hatred towards Jews, when he discovers the forbidden love, he confines Vigdis to a monastery. After a successful escape, Vigdis takes the name Sarah Hamoutal, and although it seems they will find peace for themselves and their children in the mountains, David and Hamutal are unaware of the trials and tragedies awaiting them.
A brilliant reconstruction of an incredible journey across middle ages Europe to Egypt, and an untold story of forgotten documents and forbidden love.
Oorlog en terpentijn (War and Turpentine)
Translation: Elizabeta Božinoska
Urbain Martien left behind two notebooks. They unveil his entire life. The life of an artist, a soldier, a lover, and someone who survived World War I. These notes were discovered 30 years later by his grandson, a writer, who through them resurrects a world that has disappeared. It's the period at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In his notes, he conveys almost half a century, and with his descriptions and profound love, he resounds powerfully even a hundred years later. Wrestling with this tale, the grandson traverses the years, seeking to understand his own role in time.
Filled with vivid details, reflections on painting and music, this fascinating dialogue between the deceased painter and his grandson is a precious encounter with the past we've forgotten and the present we understand less and less.
The novel has been translated into over 20 languages, andThe New York Times included it in the top ten best books of 2016.