Dutch author wins International Booker: ‘I’m as proud as a cow with seven udders’

DutchNews, August 27, 2020

Dutch writer and poet Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Photo: Jeroen Jumelet ANP

Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (1991) has won the International Booker Prize for the best novel in translation with her debut novel The Discomfort of Evening (De avond is ongemak). 

It is the first time a Dutch author has won the prestigious British prize. ‘I’m as proud as a cow with seven udders’, Rijneveld said in a reaction to the announcement which was transmitted on Wednesday evening on Youtube and Facebook. 

WE WON!!! With @M_Hutchison 🏆🏆🏆🏆❤️❤️❤️❤️👑👑👑 pic.twitter.com/s0Y635uj7q

— Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (@mariek1991) August 26, 2020

Rijneveld shares the €55,000 prize money with translator Michele Hutchison. 

Rijneveld’s book, about a religious family falling to pieces after the death of a son and seen through the eyes of his 10-year-old sister, became a bestseller when it was published in the Netherlands. It has since been translated into 21 languages. 

The jury praised the book for its ‘unfiltered look at the underbelly of family’ and called Rijneveld an ‘undeniable force’ in literature. Hutchison delivered a ‘sensitive translation’, the jury said. 

Reactions 

Rijneveld was surprised at some of the reactions in the British press, which more than the Dutch critics, commented on the book’s ‘dark and lugubrious’ aspects, particularly its scenes involving incest and cruelty to animals.

‘I don’t know why that is,’ Rijneveld told the NRC ‘In the Netherlands we think that we’re past all that. We have had Jan Wolkers, in his books animals are killed too.’