Margriet de Moor
- Opening programme 'Open landscape - open book'
Date: Tue 30 August Time: 06.00 pm Venue: National Centre for the Performing Arts - Literature and the Elements
Date: Thu 1 September Time: 07.00 pm Venue: The Bookworm Beijing - Xu Zechen in conversation with Margriet de Moor
Date: Fri 2 September Time: 02.00 pm Venue: BIBF
Life and work
Margriet de Moor (b. 1941) made her debut with a collection of stories, Op de rug gezien (‘Seen From Behind’, 1988). A year later, Dubbelportret (‘Double Portrait’) appeared, three novellas in one volume. Together these publications earned her the Van der Hoogt Prize. De Moor’s highly praised first novel, Eerst grijs dan wit dan blauw (‘First Grey, Then White, Then Blue’, 1990) won her the AKO Literature Prize, for which De virtuoos (‘The Virtuoso’, 1993) was also nominated. She has since published novels such as Hertog van Egypte (‘Duke of Egypt’, 1996), Kreutzersonate (‘The Kreutzersonata’, 2001) and De verdronkene (‘Drowned’, 2005). Her most recent novel is De schilder en het meisje (The Painter And The Girl, 2010). Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
De verdronkene
In Margriet de Moor’s fiction, tragedy often arises from trivial incidents, such as the discovery of a diary in the street or the glance of a woman in a room. She shows that the firm grip modern man thinks he has on life is mere illusion. Drowned tells the story of two sisters who make the fateful decision to switch roles for a day or two: Lidy, the stronger sibling, drives from Amsterdam to Zeeland to attend a party for her sister Amanda’s godchild, leaving her own two-year-old infant behind. It is 31 January 1953, the day the dykes of Zeeland broke and hundreds of people were drowned. The novel moves back and forth between the dark night of cold and death and the warmth and safety of Amsterdam. Even within chapters De Moor switches registers, presenting bizarre details that make her story all the more believable and affecting. Her beautiful and relentless account of lives overwhelmed by one of the greatest tragedies of modern Dutch history is both deeply human and of mythical proportions.
Translation in Chinese
- Moor, Margriet de. [Mieding] Chinese / translated from the Dutch by Zhaohui Qiang. Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Arts Publishing House, 2010. ISBN：9787532137022.