Anna Luyten in Conversation with Connie Palmen

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"All great literature is about the fight against evil." Connie Palmen places these words in the mouth of the poet Ted Hughes in her most recent novel, Jij zegt het (Whatever You Say), a fictional autobiography of the poet who stayed silent for 35 years after the 1963 suicide of his wife, poet Sylvia Plath. But how can Palmen's character fight against evil while being conscious of the fact that violence and destruction lurk at the core of love? When destruction and creation alternate as predominant forces in a love relationship? When his own rational and animal instincts are always locked in battle? Does this struggle even make sense when everything is written in the stars? Connie Palmen examines these dilemmas in an interview with Anna Luyten. How does she herself see Hughes' story in relation to reality?

Prior to this event you can attend the NRC Book Club Live, which discusses Connie Palmen's novel Lucifer.

Information

Date and time Saturday 16 January 2016 from 16:15 to 17:30 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 2

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Connie Palmen

(The Netherlands, 1955) is always exploring the boundaries between fact and fiction. She shot to fame with her first novel De wetten (The Laws, 1991). Her two subsequent novels, De vriendschap (Friendship, 1995) and I.M. (1998), also became bestsellers. She went on to publish Geheel de uwe (Sincerely Yours, 2004), Lucifer (2007) and Logboek van een onbarmhartig jaar (Logbook of a Merciless Year, 2011). Palmen has written several collections of essays, such as Een kleine filosofie van de moord (A Brief Philosophy of Murder, 2004), Het geluk van de eenzaamheid (The Joy of Loneliness, 2009) and Het drama van de afhankelijkheid (The Drama of Dependence, 2017). Many of her novels are based on events in her own life; her essays are exceptionally narrative. In 2023, she published Voornamelijk vrouwen (Mainly Women), personal essays about eleven women and one man who shape their lives in idiosyncratic ways. Palmen engages with them, challenges them, and discovers differences and similarities with her own life. Her multi-award-winning work is also internationally successful and has been translated into twenty languages.
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Anna Luyten

(Belgium, 1963) is a journalist, philosopher, and literature and theatre scholar. She has interviewed many big names from the art world for Belgian public television, and was the jury chairwoman of the Golden Owl prize from 2000 to 2006. She has written for newspapers and magazines such as De Morgen and De Standaard, and Knack, Humo and Vrij Nederland. For a commission from the Flanders and Klara festivals, she reworked a reportage into an opera libretto. She is a core contributor to the "living books programme" Uitgelezen, and was a visiting professor of art philosophy at The School of Arts in Gent. As a writer-in-residence in Bucharest she wrote De weg van de mier (The Way of the Ant), about a Romanian chauffeur who misses his lover, who fled the Ceaucescu regime. She makes IM (In Memoriam) for the Flemish-Dutch Huis de Buren institute, a multi-year series in which talks to well-known people about how they'd like to be remembered.
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