De film Het verloren transport mengt feiten en fictie zonder daar helder over te zijn. Niet doen, schrijf ik in Trouw van 4 mei 2023.
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Nieuw boek Kukuruznik vanaf 8 juni 2023 te koop
Kukuruznik is een rijke en zorgvuldig gecomponeerde roman over moed en veerkracht: over de kunst om in het donker te leren kijken.
Op deze pagina lees je meer over mijn nieuwste boek Kukuruznik
Translator Antoinette Fawcett about her experience of translating SHOCKED EARTH
Saraband Books spoke ‘For Women in Translation Month 2021’, the award-winning translator Antoinette Fawcett about her experience of translating SHOCKED EARTH by Saskia Goldschmidt.
In this wonderful article she gives us an inside view about the questions a translator is confronted with. From replicating the feeling of the novel to individual word choices, you can read about it in this blog.
“It’s nearly three months since Shocked Earth, my translation of Saskia Goldschmidt’s novel Schokland, was published, and I still feel excited and overwhelmed by the reactions I’ve had from a variety of readers, and especially from people I don’t know at all, like Helen Vassallo, on her Translating Women blog. Helen was one of the first people to review the novel and what she said was so affirming that it made me jump with joy. Although it may seem strange to say that I was pleased to read that the novel had moved her to tears, I really was overjoyed that her emotional response mirrored my own. I also wept – and laughed, and spluttered with anger, annoyance and frustration – as I was translating the novel, and not only in the early stages. That is down to Saskia Goldschmidt’s masterly creation of plot and character and her dramatic sense of dialogue, action, and scene-setting.”
Continue reading at the website of Saraband >>
Shocked Earth: Book Review by Emma Yates-Badley
The global outbreak of COVID-19 has affected every part of human lives, including the physical world. As we now navigate a post-pandemic era, it’s become even clearer that how we treat the natural world around us is paramount to its – and our own – survival.
Shocked Earth, by Dutch writer Saskia Goldschmidt, was written in 2018, way before phrases like ‘social distancing’ and ‘flatten the curve’ were a part of our daily lexicon. But now, with the publication of the English translation by Antoinette Fawcett, its subject matter is all the more urgent.
The novel follows the lives of the Koridon family: Femke, her mother Trijn and her grandfather, Zwier, who each have different ideas about how to run their family farm in Groningen province. Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing principles, but Trijn is “convinced that you need to scale up to compete in the world market”. Zwier is reluctant to abandon the traditional methods he has always known. With three generations all living under the same roof and working together, you might expect things to be a little fraught. But the Koridon family is rife with decades-old tension. And if all that familial drama isn’t enough, their home province is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by a gas extraction operation near their farm.Lees verder
SHOCKED EARTH – Review by Saraband Books
I’m going to go out on a limb straight away, and declare this one of my favourite books of 2021: it was one of those rare books that I kept thinking about while I wasn’t reading it, and couldn’t wait to get back to when I had some reading time. It’s an absolute cracker, and I’m excited to tell you why.
Shocked Earth is the story of a farming family in Groningen province. We meet three generations of the Koridon family: Zwier, the grandfather, a quiet and undemonstrative man who nonetheless is capable of deep affection; Trijn, his daughter, who never wanted to work on the family farm but after an ill-fated bid for freedom returned and never left; Femke, Trijn’s daughter, who wants to move into organic dairy farming but meets intransigence from her mother. After some background about Trijn’s childhood, her disastrous bid for independence via an ultimately abusive relationship with Femke’s father and her subsequent return to the family farm, the main focus is on Femke in more or less the present day. Femke wants to turn the farm into an enterprise that will “work with nature rather than against it”, while Trijn is adamant that this would be a sure path to financial ruin, and Zwier is reluctant to abandon the traditional methods that have shaped his life’s work. Femke is introverted and reserved, but when she meets Danielle, an “offcomer” who shows her what desire is, it is “as if a small animal had broken free inside her.” Needless to say, Trijn is about as enthusiastic about Femke’s romantic choice as she is about her plans for the farm, and the two women skirt around each other with shards of resentment and unarticulated reproaches constantly driving between them.Lees verder
Recensie van het boek: Veel succes met uw enthousiasme
Enno de Witt schrijft in Boekblad:
Doordat Goldschmidt gebruik kon maken van het zeer zorgvuldig bijgehouden archief – alleen de faxen zijn wat verbleekt – staat het boek vol met hilarische anekdotes en interessante afbeeldingen, maar wat vooral aanspreekt is de rode draad: hoe een alleenstaande moeder met twee kinderen besluit haar passie te volgen en tegendraadse keuzes maakt die vaak op het randje zitten, maar (bijna) altijd goed uitpakken.
(—) Op naar de volgende dertig jaar. En dan graag weer een boek.
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