Thank You For Being With Us (VERZET 2)

Book 2 of Strangers Press' chapbook series, VERZET.

This chapbook features two newly translated short stories. In one, a father and son, barely on speaking terms, meet for the first time in years in a television studio for a live broadcast to discuss a book the son has written about their failed relationship.

Their artfully rendered alienations from and frustrations with each other speak of the widening generational gap we are all experiencing. In the other, a troubled voyeur watches from his window as people come and go from a local massage parlour while contemplating his life.

These compelling, well-wrought characters draw the reader entertainingly into their strange and heart-breaking lives.

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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.