Although I had picked up the author's works throughout the years, it was Eleanor Wachtel's interview with Cees Nooteboom that firmly nudged his Rituals onto my reading list for Iris' DutchLit Fortnight this year. (The interview is available in podcast here.) 1980; HBJ, Translated Adrienne Dixon, 1983 Rituals
Reading The Tea Lords in close proximity to Lawrence Hill's novel The Book of Negroes raises the question of what stories one prefers to hear told. The Tea Lords chronicles life on an Dutch colonial tea plantation in Java in the 1870s, from the plantation owner's perspective. The Book of
So Iris' Dutch Lit month was in June, right? Many of you likely participated during June. Which, of course, was the point: a shared celebration of Dutch Lit. I was planning to do that too. And I did have my copy of Hella S. Haasse's The Tea Lords well ahead
