Böcker av Gerbrand Bakker

Multi-award winning Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker's phenomenal new novel about grief and the unavoidable power of family ties. Simon never knew his father, Cornelis. When his wife told him she was pregnant, Cornelis packed his bags, and a day later he was dead. Or everyone assumed he was dead; after all, he was on the passenger list of the KLM plane that crashed in Tenerife in 1977. Simon is a hairdresser, just like his father and grandfather before him, but he is not passionate about cutting and shaving. 'Closed' appears on his shop's front door more often than 'open', because every customer is a person, and people suck the energy from him. But there is one client he regularly interacts with: the writer. The writer is looking for a subject for his next book, and becomes captivated by the story of Simon's father. As Simon probes the mystery of what happened to his father, a deeply humane and beautifully observed portrait of loneliness emerges in another captivating novel from one of Europe's greatest storytellers.

WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN PRIZE'A wonderful novel. Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up staying longer.

When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands.