Writersblog

Salomon Kroonenberg

Salomon Kroonenberg, Dutch writer

The Dutch programme at the International Book Fair in Beijing was cunn... >>> read more

Henk Pröpper

Henk Pröpper, Director Dutch Foundation for Literature

In two weeks’ time, the official opening of one of the largest b... >>> read more

Kai Kang

Kai Kang, Journalist China Reading Weekly

Dear Dutch publishers. The book fair is over. Perhaps you’ll now... >>> read more

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert, Dutch illustrators

The days are full and long. We are incessantly bombarded with impressi... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

Arriving on the stand on the first day, I’d asked a Chinese visi... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

Big excitement today since we were finally meeting with Songyu from Fl... >>> read more

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert, Dutch illustrators

It’s now the third day, and the first one with plenty of sun. Un... >>> read more

Kai Kang

Kai Kang, Journalist China Reading Weekly

What a great opportunity to learn about the Dutch literature for Chine... >>> read more

Salomon Kroonenberg

Salomon Kroonenberg, Dutch writer

A duck flies to and fro over the vast expanses of world ocean, despera... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

‘In the era of browsing, we provide reading.’ - Slogan see... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

The jewel in the crown of our collection of Arbeiderspers titles publi... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

The Chinese publishers I have met during the course of my career, the ... >>> read more

Salomon Kroonenberg

Salomon Kroonenberg, Dutch writer

I have so far never been to a book fair. Nor do I know what to imagine... >>> read more

Kai Kang

Kai Kang, Journalist China Reading Weekly

Since 2006, I began writing about the Netherlands’ performance a... >>> read more

Henk Pröpper

Henk Pröpper, Director Dutch Foundation for Literature

Now that the fair is just round the corner, this is perhaps the moment... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

The traffic in Beijing is horrendous, I’m sure the other blogger... >>> read more

Thomas Möhlmann

Thomas Möhlmann, Staff member Dutch Foundation for Literature

What an evening the poets and the approximately 200 onlookers present ... >>> read more


Henk van Woerden - A Mouthful of Glass

Henk van Woerden - A Mouthful of Glass

In 1966 Demitrios Tsafendas killed South African premier Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. In this powerful book Henk Van Woerden reconstructs the life of Tsafendas and gives at the same time a personal and intimate account of the South African trauma.

Tsafendas was born half-Greek, half-African, in colonial Mozambique, a world defined by racial prejudice. Van Woerden describes the man’s flight from country to country and his failure to fit anywhere. He was Christian, communist, coloured, black, white. Rejection and disintegration went together; by the end he was taking orders from creatures dwelling in his body. Was he mad, or was the madness outside him?

This traumatic life fascinated Van Woerden who, as a young white boy emigrated to South Africa and later returned to the Netherlands but was unable to settle. Van Woerden is also looking for a ‘home’ and seems to have found it at the end when he eventually meets Tsafendas. It is a sad and moving ending because homecoming here is inevitably coming home to the edge of an insanity that is part of everyday life in South Africa.

Biography

Henk van Woerden (1947-2005) grew up in Leiden and moved to Cape Town, South Africa, at the age of ten. From 1965 to 1967 he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, before returning to Europe in May 1968. His prose debut Don’t Look (1993) received the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Award for best literary prose debut. A Mouthful of Glass is the third part of his South African trilogy.

QUOTES

  • ‘A thoroughly successful blend of biography and fiction, suggesting in intriguing ways how a new history of South Africa might be written.’ – J.M. Coetzee
  • ‘A quietly devastating work of reconstruction, giving back to the supposedly insane assassin a history of perpetual statelessness.’ – The Observer