NRC Book Club Live: Connie Palmen's Lucifer

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A festival tradition: the NRC Book Club Live. A panel headed by NRC books editor Michel Krielaars, including staffers Margot Dijkgraaf, Arjen Fortuin and Toef Jaeger, discusses Connie Palmen's Lucifer (2007). In this philosophical whodunit, the wife of composer Lucas Loos falls into an abyss on a Greek island in the summer of 1981. A quarter-century later, the protagonist decides to investigate. She encounters unexpected information through the colourful inhabitants of 1980s Amsterdam. Was this death predicted years earlier in a musical number, or was the fall a terrible accident? In a blurb on the book flap, the author says she was inspired by events surrounding Dutch composer Peter Schat (1935-2003) and his wife.

Everyone is welcome, and of course you, the reader of the book, can add your two cents to the discussion. Afterwards you can attend the interview of Connie Palmen by Anna Luyten, which will also touch on her new novel Jij zegt het (Whatever You Say), based on the lives of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, the poet who famously committed suicide.

Information

Date and time Saturday 16 January 2016 from 14:30 to 15:45 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 2

Line-up

Michel Krielaars

(Netherlands, 1961) is a writer, journalist and, since 2012, Editor-in-Chief of the literature section of NRC newspaper. He studied history and Russian at the University of Amsterdam. Krielaars has written novels, a short-story collection, and various books about Russian history. Het brilletje van Tsjechov (Through Chekov's Glasses) was published in 2014, a report of his travels through Russia in the footsteps of the famous author. His book Reizen door Rusland (Travels through Russia) earned high praise and won the 2015 Bob den Uyl Prize. Alles voor het moederland (Everything for the Mother Country, 2017) tells about Stalin's reign of terror in the times of Isaak Babel and Vasili Grossman.
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Toef Jaeger

(Bloemendaal, NL, 1971) is an editor with the daily NRC Handelsblad newspaper. Her book Koning eenoog, en migrantenverhaal (King One-Eye: An immigrant story) about Henk van Woerden was presented during the 2015 festival; the story of ever-seeking immigrant Van Woerden (1947-2005), who was a writer as well as a visal artist. He wrote a trilogy abut South Africa that received national and international attention, and which, in its rootlessness, forever changed Dutch literature about South Africa. In 2014 Het Boekenparadijs. De opkomst en ondergang van de grootste boekhandelsketen in Nederland (Book Paradise: The rise and fall of the biggest bookstore chain in the Netherlands) was published, which he co-wrote with NRC Handelsblad editor Hanneke Chin-A-Fo. It is a revealing and incisive reconstruction of the recent demise of the Polare chain.


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Margot Dijkgraaf

(The Netherlands, 1960) is a literary critic, writer, curator, interviewer, debate leader and "ambassador between France and the Netherlands in the field of literature", as a French ambassador once said. She has been writing about literature for some 30 years, mainly for the NRC daily. She published books on French and European literature, on Hella S. Haasse and Cees Nooteboom. Her In de voetsporen van mijn grootvader (2021) is an autobiographical search for her literary genes. Before that, she published Met Parijse pen. Literaire omzwervingen (in collaboration with photographer Bart Koetsier, 2020), which takes readers to Paris for walks in the footsteps of famous Dutch and French writers. She was joint artistic curator of the Netherlands' Guest of Honour role at the 2024 Leipzig Book Fair with German journalist Bettina Baltschev.

Go to the website of Margot Dijkgraaf
Instagram: @margotdijkgraaf
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Arjen Fortuin

(Amsterdam, NL, 1971) is a literary critic with the NRC Handelsblad newspaper. He believes that a novel is good if it changes his view of the world. Fortuin studied history and philosophy in Amsterdam and Madrid. During his studies he wrote for the faculty paper Babel; Folia, the weekly paper of the Amsterdam University; Biografie Bulletin and Historisch Nieuwsblad. He's worked for the Books supplement of NRC Handelsblad since 1998, became its editor in 1999 and literary coordinator in 2005. He has focused strongly on Dutch literature, history and sports books. Fortuin was an editor with Magazijn, a yearbook for writers under forty, and together with Hans Schoots compiled Ongenaakbaar Madrid (Inaccessible Madrid, 2003), a collection of stories about the Spanish capital. He's on the editorial board of the Foundation of Literary Activities Amsterdam. His biography of publisher Geert van Oorschot was published in 2015.
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