Reconstruction (VERZET 1)

Book 1 of Strangers Press' chapbook collection, VERZET.

Ranging from the speculative ‘Jacques d’Or’ to the fiercely political ‘The Radical’, this collection is a journey through enjoyably contrasted considerations of what kind of world we are collectively creating.

 Amatmoekrim’s characters are frequently cheerful and entertaining though the writing is also pervasively and expertly threaded with threatening or mournful undertones, which creates a kind of haunting effect for the reader, a sense that all is not well or quite what it seems. This enriches the reader’s own sense of the workings of the world around them.

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VERZET (tr.: Resistance) is the latest of our ground-breaking and highly collectible sets of translated short stories from around the world. This time we teamed up with the amazing Manchester-based agency Office of Craig to bring you a new hit of beautifully designed chapbooks to get stuck into. The VERZET series showcases the work of eight exciting, new -- to the English language -- writers from the Netherlands and they are available NOW! 

This new list encompasses an impressive array of award winners and nominees including Jamal Ouarichi, Karin Amatmoekrim, and Sanneke van Hassel, as well as newer voices all long overdue or dearly deserving of English language translations. It's a bit like taking a short visit home, for us: our name, Strangers Press, comes from The Strangers of the 16th century -- a group of migrants from the then Spanish Netherlands who enriched the culture and technology of the East Anglian region and whose architectural style even informs our own logo. We like to think this set is a kind of symbolic re-tracing of that journey and one that is fittingly timed.  Order yours now, Strangers, and here's to a more diverse Europe and finding our way to being a kinder, more welcoming place.

VERZET was made possible by generous funding from the Dutch Foundation for Literature.