Shelter (VERZET 7)

Book 7 of Strangers Press' chapbook series, VERZET.

These short stories address a number of important themes facing Dutch, and indeed European, society today; class, social mobility, multiculturalism, prejudice, loneliness, and urban sprawl, all in a prose style that is simultaneously atmospheric, topical, sympathetic, and frequently wonderfully descriptive.

One story centres on the experiences of an immigrant from Cape Verde, while the second and third stories have white, middle-class Dutch as their main characters, then a short finale follows the thoughts of a homeless man as he traverses the city. 

These voices collectively capture a snapshot of our contemporary moment; each voice yearns, wonders, and worries at the world and their own place within it.

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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.