Stephan Enter

(Rozendaal, NL 1973), penname of S.D.V.B. van Schaffelaer, made his debut in 1999 with the collection of short stories Winterhanden (Winter Hands). It was followed by Lichtjaren (Light Years, 2005) and Spel (Game, 2007). His breakthrough came in 2011 with Grip, winning him the F. Bordewijk Prize and the Gouden Boekenuil (Golden Book Owl). The Dutch daily paper Trouw wrote: 'Grip is rich in ideas, classical and profound, scarce qualities in Dutch prose of today.' The Reformatorisch Dagblad, a Christian newspaper, calls Enter 'an infallible stylist [...] who with well-chosen sentences lifts worlds, turns them round in front of your bewildered eyes, to make them disappear with playful ease. Not by all kinds of linguistic frills but simply by writing very well and very precisely, with balanced metaphor.' Late 2011 The Volkskrant elected Grip as one of the Three Best Books of 2011. Grip has been translated into German, Italian and Norwegian, among other languages. His fourth novel Compassie (Compassion) was published in 2015.