Marente de Moor will present her award-winning book “The Dutch Maiden” in Chapel Hill & Pittsburgh
Marente de Moor presents her newly translated book “The Dutch Maiden” (de Nederlandse maagd) in Chapel Hill and Pittsburgh. With this book De Moor won the prestigious European Union Prize for Literature in 2014.
In the summer of 1936, Janna, a young Dutch fencer, is sent away to stay with her father’s old friend, a German, Egon von Bötticher. Egon had returned injured and embittered from the front at the end of the First World War, and now teaches fencing, and organizes bloody duels.
In this strange world, Janna, intrigued by her unfeeling maître d’armes, starts looking for answers. What happened between Egon and her father? Which of them has to settle old scores?
Marente de Moor was the Dutch recipient of the European Union Prize for Literature in 2014 for her novel De Nederlandse maagd (The Dutch Maiden in English). Published in 2010, De Nederlandse maagd is her second novel, and received the AKO Literatuurprijs, the best known prize for literature in the Netherlands.
The book follows a young Dutch girl and her relationship with a mentor in interwar Germany. Dutch and foreign presses describe the novel as “whirling” and “animalistic”, and compare it to the likes of Tolstoy and Jünger.
De Moor has authored several award-winning novels and short stories in addition to De Nederlandse maagd, and has had her work translated into ten languages. Her third novel, The Roundhay gardenscene, was shortlisted for the Libris Prize for Literature. Learn more about de Moor on her website.