Tag archieven: Engelse roman

Engeland, Engelse romans, Engelse schrijvers

Benjamin Wood – Seascraper

Benjamin Wood Seascraper review, recensie en informatie over de inhoud van de Engelse roman. Op 17 juli 2025 verschijnt bij Viking de nieuwe roman van de uit Engeland afkomstige schrijver Benjamin Wood. De roman is door de jury geselecteerd voor de longlist van de Booker Prize 2025. Een Nederlandse vertaling van de roman is niet verkrijgbaar.

Benjamin Wood Seascraper review en recensie

  • “A quiet, unassuming book about honest work and modest dreams, about sons and their duty, and those brief, wonderful moments when we glimpse the possibility of living a different life. Benjamin Wood is a magnificent writer and I intend to read everything he has written.” (Douglas Stuart)
  • “Wood is up there with the very best… he packs more poetry into his opening paragraph than many a Booker-winner achieves in their entire oeuvre.” (Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times)
  • “Seascraper shimmers, salt-flecked and rippling. It swells with tense, memorable moments… poignant, authentic and hopeful.” (Spectator)
  • “Seascraper seems, at first, to be a beautifully described account of the working day of a young man, Thomas Flett, who works as a shanker in a north of England coastal town, scraping the Irish Sea shore for scrimps. And it is that: the details of the job and the physicality of the labour are wonderfully captured by Benjamin Wood. But this novel becomes much more than that. It’s a book about dreams, an exploration of class and family, a celebration of the power and the glory of music, a challenge to the limits of literary realism, and – stunningly – a love story.” (Booker Prize 2025 Jury)

Benjamin Wood Seascraper

Seascraper

  • Auteur: Benjamin Wood (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse roman
  • Taal; Engels
  • Uitgever: Viking
  • Verschijnt: 17 juli 2025
  • Omvang: 176 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook / luisterboek
  • Prijs: £ 14,99
  • Longlist Booker Prize 2025
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de roman van Benjamin Wood

Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach to scrape for shrimp, spending the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street, and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream.

When a striking visitor turns up, bringing the promise of Hollywood glamour, Thomas is shaken from the drudgery of his days and begins to see a different future. But how much of what the American claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?

Haunting and timeless, this is the story of a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfilment far beyond the world he knows.

Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in Merseyside. Seascraper is his fifth novel. his previous works have been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the RSL Encore Award ,the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the European Union Prize for Literature. In 2014, he won France’s Prix du Roman Fnac. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at King’s College, London, and lives in Surrey with his wife and sons.

Bijpassende boeken

Engeland, Engelse romans, Engelse schrijvers, Historische Roman

Andrew Miller – The Land in Winter

Andrew Miller The Land in Winter review, recensie en informatie over de inhoud van de roman over de strenge winter van 1962 van de Engelse schrijver. Op 24 oktober 2024 verschijnt bij Sceptre de nieuwe roman van schrijver Andrew Miller. De roman is door de jury geselecteerd voor de longlist van de Booker Prize 2025. Een Nederlandse vertaling van de roman is niet verkrijgbaar.

Andrew Miller The Land in Winter review en recensie

  • “In the depths of Britain’s coldest winter, two neighbouring women forge a friendship in the countryside. It’s 1962 and they have both just become pregnant. Around them, the men are struggling: maimed by father figures, haunted by the past, hampered by the destructiveness of their own desires. As a winter storm wreaks havoc on their lives, these characters become pivotal figures in a community precariously balanced between history and future: between the damage wrought by the war and the freedom for women that lies ahead. In beautifully atmospheric prose, Andrew Miller brings suspense and mystery to this seemingly inconsequential chapter in British history.” (Booker Prize 2025 jury)
  • “This is a quiet book about quiet lives, but the delicate attention Miller affords his characters’ inner lives makes for incredibly satisfying reading.” (Lucy Scholes, Financial Times)
  • “The Land in Winter is a brilliant novel, but wrap your emotions up tight because Miller steers it expertly towards a desolate, distressing ending.” (Martin Chilton, Independent)
  • “Psychologically acute… For 200 impeccable pages Miller gives us four intensely imagined inner lives… grippin.” (Times Literary Supplement)

Andrew Miller The Land in Winter

The Land in Winter

  • Auteur: Andrew Miller (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse historische roman
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Sceptre
  • Verschijnt: 24 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 384 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook / luisterboek
  • Prijs: £ 20,00
  • Winnaar Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025
  • Winnaar Winston Graham Historcial Prize 2025
  • Longlist Booker Prize 2025
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de roman van Andrew Miller over de winter van 1962

December 1962, The West Country. Local doctor Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He’s been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that’s already faltering.

But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel.

Where do you hide when you can’t leave home? And where, in a frozen world, can you run to?

Andrew Miller was born in 1974 in Bristol, Engeland. His first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm’s Song and The Land in Winter, which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2025. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.

Bijpassende boeken

Engelse romans, Engelse schrijvers

Jonathan Buckley – One Boat

Jonathan Buckley One Boat review, recensie en informatie over de inhoud van de Engelse roman. Op 13 maart 2025 verschijnt bij Fitzcarraldo Editons de roman van de uit Engeland afkomstige schrijver Jonathan Buckley. De roman is door de jury geselecteerd voor de longlist van de Booker Prize 2025. Een Nederlandse vertaling van de roman is niet verkrijgbaar.

Jonathan Buckley One Boat review en recensie

  • “A strange, sly and self-assured novel, in which both nothing and everything happens…. There is a great deal of freight on board One Boat, but it packs so neatly into 168 pages that it never feels overburdened. This is a novel to be returned to as a place in which to think, just as Teresa returns to her Greek town.” (Frances Wilson, Times Literary Supplement)
  • “Teresa’s story emerges in non-linear fragments of reminiscence and notebook scribbles…. An understated story about selfhood emerges from the flotsam of memories and jottings. When Buckley at last pulls back the metafictional curtain in the book’s final pages, he formalizes his narrator’s driftings and draftings. What seems at first a set of disparate, unpolished vignettes proves to be a masterfully unified conceit.” (Rachel Armitage, Literary Review)
  • “Following the death of her father, Teresa returns to the small coastal town in Greece she first visited when her mother died nearly a decade before. From this scenario, tacking between the events of the second trip and memories of the first, Buckley creates a novel of quiet brilliance and sly humour, packed with mystery and indeterminacy. The way in which the book interleaves Teresa’s relationship to her mother, her involvement in an amateur murder investigation, and an account of a love affair, raises questions about grief, obsession, personhood and human connectivity we found to be as stimulating as they are complex.” (Booker Prize 2025 Jury)

Jonathan Buckley One Boat

One Boat

  • Auteur: Jonathan Buckley (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse roman
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Fitzcarraldo Editions
  • Verschijnt: 13 maart 2025
  • Omvang: 168 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback / ebook
  • Prijs: £ 12,99 / £ 7,99
  • Longlist Booker Prize 2025
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de roman van Benjamin Wood

On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast – the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly – her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew.

Soon Teresa encounters some of the people she met last time around: Petros, an eccentric mechanic, whose life story may or may not be part of John’s; the beautiful Niko, a diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, their sense of who they are.

Artfully constructed, absorbing and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility.

Jonathan Buckley is born in 1956 in Birmingham. He is a writer and editor now living in Brighton. In 2015 he won the BBC National Short Story Award for ‘Briar Road’, and he is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His previous novel, Tell, was the joint winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, a global, biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize. One Boat is his thirteenth novel.

Bijpassende boeken

Amerikaanse roman, Amerikaanse Schrijvers, Engelse romans, Engelse schrijvers, Familieroman

Ben Markovitz – The Rest of Our Lives

Ben Markovitz The Rest of Our Lives review, recensie en informatie over de inhoud van de roman van de in Texas geboren Britse schrijver. Op 27 maart 2025 verschijnt bij Faber & Faber de nieuwe roman van schrijver Benjamin Markovitz. De roman is door de jury geselecteerd voor de longlist van de Booker Prize 2025. Een Nederlandse vertaling van de roman is niet verkrijgbaar.

Ben Markovitz The Rest of Our Lives review en recensie

  • “When Tom Layward’s wife cheated on him, he stayed for the children but promised to leave when his youngest turned eighteen. Twelve years later, Tom drops his daughter off at college, but instead of driving back to New York he heads west. What follows is a remarkably satisfying road trip full of strangers, friends, and self-discovery. It’s clear author Ben Markovits has spent time teaching. This novel speaks like a much-loved professor, one whose classes have a terribly long waitlist. It’s matter of fact, effortlessly warm, and it uses the smallest parts of human behaviour to uphold bigger themes, like mortality, sickness, and love. The Rest of Our Lives is a novel of sincerity and precision. We found it difficult to put it down.” (Booker Prize 2025 jury)
  • “We all fear irrelevance as technology and society outpace us, and as the young outgrow us. Yet, reading Ben Markovits’s gentle, powerful and funny novel, we are reminded that family love can ground us and keep us together.” (Philip Womack, Times Literary Supplement)
  • “The Rest of Our Lives is another quiet triumph, an elegant, devastating book that lays bare the way time calcifies our failures, how we find ourselves trapped not by circumstance but by the slow erosion of the will to escape. Markovits has long been one of our most under-appreciated novelists; this is yet more proof that he deserves far greater recognition.” (Alex Preston, Guardian)

Ben Markovits The Rest of Our Lives

The Rest of Our Lives

  • Auteur: Ben Markovitz (Engeland, Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: familieroman
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Faber & Faber
  • Verschijnt: 27 maart 2025
  • Omvang: 256 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: £ 16,99
  • Longlist Booker Prize 2025
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de roman van Ben Markovitz

When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair, the synopsis reads, ‘he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact. He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class – something he hasn’t yet told his wife.

So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past – an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son – en route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California. Pitch perfect, quietly exhilarating and moving, The Rest of Our Lives is a novel about family, marriage and those moments which may come to define us.

Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas, London and Berlin. His novels include Either Side of Winter, You Don’t Have to Live Like This, Christmas in Austin, and, most recently, The Sidekick. He has published essays, stories, poetry and reviews in the Guardian, Granta, The Paris Review and the New York Times, among others. In 2013 Granta selected him as one of their Best of Young British Novelists and in 2015 he won the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in London and teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Bijpassende boeken

Engelse romans, Engelse schrijvers

Kasim Ali – Who Will Remain

Kasim Ali Who Will Remain review, recensie en informatie nieuwe roman van de Engelse schrijver uit Birmingham. Op 17 juli 2025 verschijnt bij 4th Estate de nieuwe roman van de Engelse schrijver Kasim Ali. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van het boek, de auteur en over de uitgave. Een Nederlandse vertaling van de roman is niet verkrijgbaar.

Kasim Ali Who Will Remain review en recensie

  • “One of the most gripping novels I’ve read in a long time.” (Samira Ahmed, BBC Radio 4)
  • “An unflinching meditation on fractured loyalties … Reminiscent of the great modernists, Ali has written a quietly seething novel.”  (Zain Khalid, author of Brother Alive)

Kasim Ali Who Will Remain

Who Will Remain

  • Auteur: Kasim Ali (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse roman over Birmingham
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: 4th Estate
  • Verschijnt: 17 juli 2025
  • Omvang: 320 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook / luisterboek
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de roman over Birmingham van Kasim Ali

A powerful new novel following a young man as he weighs up the life of safety that his parents want for him and another path on the streets outside his door.

Amir has grown up in Alum Rock, Birmingham, under the care of his sensible older brother, Bilal, and his cousin Saqib, born just a few days before Amir. Alum Rock can be a troubled place, but Amir has managed to keep his head down, worked hard and stayed out of trouble … until now.

When Saqib is killed in a gang fight and Bilal announces his engagement, Amir suddenly loses the two men who keep him grounded. Amir’s university grades are collapsing, he’s running out of money, and pressure mounts from every direction. As tensions flare, the friends left around him start to draw Amir into their more dangerous pursuits, and the family ties that have bound him so completely begin to unravel. Amir decides he only has himself to rely on and must take his future into his own hands.

This is a blistering story of social expectations and social condemnation, of dead ends and divided loyalties, and of what’s left behind when you have nothing left to lose.

Kasim Ali was born and raised in Alum Rock, Birmingham. He is the author of the debut novel Good Intentions, has written fiction for BBC Radio 4 and has a column at The Bookseller. His short fiction has been longlisted for the 4th Estate and Guardian 4thWrite Short Story Prize, and Good Intentions was shortlisted for the Mo Siewcharran Prize. He works as an editor in publishing and now lives in London.

Bijpassende boeken

Engelse romans, Engelse schrijfsters

Elizabeth Day – Een van ons

Elizabeth Day Een van ons recensie en informatie over de inhoud van de nieuwe roman van de Engels schrijfster. Op 16 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Uitgeverij Ambo | Anthos de Nederlandse vertaling van One of Us, de nieuwe roman van Elizabeth Day. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van het boek, de auteur en over de uitgave.

Elizabeth Day Een van ons recensie

  • “Een verleidelijk portret van privilege en macht.” (The Times)
  • “Dit is Elizabeth Day’s  schrijven op zijn best.” (Dolly Alderton)

Elizabeth Day Een van ons

Een van ons

  • Auteur: Elizabeth Day (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse roman
  • Origineel: One of Us (2025)
  • Nederlandse vertaling: Lidwien Biekmann, Tjadine Stheeman
  • Uitgever: Ambo | Anthos
  • Verschijnt: 16 oktober 2035
  • Omvang: 384 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback / ebook / luisterboek
  • Prijs: € 24,99 / € 13,99 / € 16,99
  • Boek bestellen bij: Boekenwereld / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de nieuwe roman van Elizabeth Day

Martin en Ben waren jarenlang beste vrienden, tot Ben Martins leven ruïneerde. Als Martin na zeven jaar stilte een uitnodiging ontvangt om terug te keren naar de familie Fitzmaurice, kan hij de kans om wraak te nemen niet weerstaan​​.

Ben wordt inmiddels getipt als de volgende premier. Maar Martin ziet wel wat zwakke plekken: Bens vrouw, bij wie het bevoorrechte bestaan ​​begint te wringen. Hun dochter, die vecht tegen alles waar haar ouders voor staan. Een in ongenade gevallen parlementslid, vastbesloten om zijn comeback te maken. En Bens zus, wier vroegtijdige dood veel vragen oproept.

Martin en Ben worden gedwongen onder ogen te zien wat liefde werkelijk betekent, als familie, macht en loyaliteit op het spel staan.

In dit onweerstaanbare verhaal over bedrog, oude banden en verzwegen schandalen wordt een gegoede Britse familie geconfronteerd met de consequenties van privilege en de prijs van macht.

Elizabeth Day is geboren in Noord-Ierland en opgegroeid in Engeland. Ze de auteur van meerdere romans, waarvan Het feest de bekendste is. In Nederlandse vertaling verschenen ook het non-fictie boek Durf te falen en de romans Schaduwstad en De huisgenoot. Daarnaast is ze zeer succesvol met haar podcast How To Fail.

Bijpassende boeken

Beste Romans, Engeland, Engelse romans, Engelse schrijfsters, Engelse schrijvers

Beste Engelse romans

Beste Engelse romans. Wat zijn de allerbeste romans van Engelse schrijvers en schrijfsters? Welke romans uit Engeland worden gezien als de beste?

Beste Engelse romans

Uiteraard kun je uitgebreid discussiëren over wat de beste Engelse romans zijn? Sterker nog iedere lezer zal zijn persoonlijke voorkeur hebben. Dus een top zoveel lijst van de beste romans van uit de Engeland afkomstige auteurs is niet helemaal nuttig.

Nieuwsbrief boekentips en recensies

Elke week de nieuwste boekentips en recensies? Meld je aan voor de nieuwsbrief.

Wat zijn de beste Engelse romans?

Onze redactie kiest ervoor om een alfabetisch overzicht te maken van Engelse romans die volgens velen het lezen meer dan waard zijn. Er zullen bovendien nieuwe uitstekende en uitmuntende romans van schrijvers en schrijfsters uit Engeland worden toegevoegd. Ook is er aandacht voor de Nederlandse vertaling van de roman, mits deze verschenen is, uiteraard.

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice recensie en reviewJane Austen – Pride and Prejudice

roman uit 1813
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
Nederlandse vertaling: Trots en vooroordeel
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows…lees verder >

Angela Carter Nights at the Circus reviewAngela Carter – Nights at the Circus

Engelse roman uit 1984
Nederlandse vertaling: Circusnachten
Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney’s circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia…lees verder >

E.M. Forster – A Passage to India

India roman uit 1924
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nederlandse vertaling:  Tocht naar India
A compelling portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India depicts the fate of individuals caught in the great political and cultural conflicts of their age. It begins when Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, and feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community…lees verder >

Frederick Forsyth The Day Of The Jackal reviewFrederick Forsyth – The Day of the Jackal

politieke thriller uit 1971
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nederlandse vertaling: De dag van de Jakhals
1963. An anonymous Englishman is hired by the Operations Chief of French terrorist organisation O.A.S. to murder the French president, General Charles de Gaulle. A failed attempt in the previous year means the target will be nearly impossible to reach. Only one man could do the job: an assassin of legendary talent known only as The Jackal…lees verder >

Graham Green The Quiet American Engelse spionageroman uit 1955Graham Greene – The Quiet American

spionageroman uit 1955
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nederlandse vertaling: De stille Amerikaan
Into the intrigue and violence of 1950s Saigon comes CIA agent Alden Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious ‘Third Force’. As Pyle’s naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch…lees verder >

Radclyffe Hall The Well of Loneliness reviewRadclyffe Hall – The Well of Loneliness

lesbische roman uit 1928
The Well of Loneliness tells the story of tomboyish Stephen, who hunts, wears trousers and cuts her hair short – and who gradually comes to realise that she is attracted to women. Charting her romantic and professional adventures during the First World War and beyond, the novel provoked a furore on first publication in 1928 for its lesbian heroine and led to a notorious legal trial for obscenity…lees verder >

Barry Hanes A Kestrel for a Knave reviewBarry Hanes – A Kestrel for a Knave

roman uit 1968
Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a disillusioned teenager growing up in a small Yorkshire mining town. Violence is commonplace and he is frequently cold and hungry. Yet he is determined to be a survivor and when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk he discovers a passion in life. Billy identifies with her proud silence and she inspired in him the trust and love that nothing else can. Intense and raw and bitingly honest…lees verder >

Conclave Richard Harris thriller from 2016 about the papal electionRobert Harris – Conclave

thriller uit 2016 over de pausverkiezing in het Vaticaan
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nederlandse vertaling: Conclaaf
The Pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and twenty Cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth…lees verder >

M. John Harrison The Course of the Heart reviewM. John Harrison – The Course of the Heart

roman uit 1990
On a hot May night, three Cambridge students carry out a ritualistic act that changes their lives. Decades later, none of the participants can remember what transpired; but their clouded memories bind them together. Unable to move on, Pam Stuyvesant has epilepsy and is plagued by sensual visions. Her husband Lucas believes that a dwarfish creature is stalking him, and invents histories to soothe Pam’s fears…lees verder >

L.P. Hartley The Go-Between recensie en reviewL.P. Hartley – The Go-Between

roman uit 1954
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Winnaar van de W. H. Heinemann Award
When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation…lees verder >

James Hilton Goodbye, Mr. Chips First EditionJames Hilton – Goodbye, Mr. Chips

roman uit 1934
Sitting in his chair by the fire on a dark autumn afternoon, a beloved schoolmaster reflects on a long life well lived. Now in old age, Mr. Chipping, or ‘Chips’ as he’s affectionately known by his students, has watched the nineteenth century sail into the twentieth, known love, friendship and war, and felt the lasting wounds of heartbreak and loss…lees verder >

Aldous Huxley Brave New World recensie en reviewAldous Huxley – Brave New World

dystopische roman uit 1932
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nederlandse vertaling: Heerlijke nieuwe wereld
Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress…lees verder >

Margaret Kennedy Lucy Carmichael recensieMargaret Kennedy – Lucy Carmichael

roman uit 1951
Lucy Carmichael is jilted at the altar. But no matter. Her loving and kind family never liked her explorer fiancé anyway. Instead of moping or falling into her supportive family’s arms, however, Lucy abandons their suburban home. Heading for the country, she takes up a teaching position in the industrial town of Ravonsbridge. There, she finds solace in her work, in her new (rather gossipy) colleagues – and rediscovers her sensible young self…lees verder >

Joel Lane The Blue Mask reviewJoel Lane – The Blue Mask

Engelse roman uit 2003
Neil is a student at Birmingham University, living a typical life of gigs, clubs, politics, sex. One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks, viciously carving up Neil’s face and leaving him mutilated beyond recognition. Neil’s recovery is a journey through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation. His attempt to track down his attacker becoming a search for his own hidden, destructive self…lees verder >

Laurie Lee As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning reviewLaurie Lee – As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

memoir en zomerboek uit 1969
Abandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London. There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin. But, deciding to travel further a field and knowing only the Spanish phrase for ‘Will you please give me a glass of water?’, he heads for Spain. With just a blanket to sleep under and his trusty violin, he spends a year crossing Spain, from Vigo in the north to the southern coast. Only the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War puts an end to his extraordinary peregrinations…lees verder >

Penelope Lively – Heat Wave

Engelse roman uit 1996, zomerroman
Pauline is spending the summer at World’s End, a cottage somewhere in the middle of England. This year the adjoining cottage is occupied by her daughter Teresa and baby grandson Luke; and, of course, Maurice, the man Teresa married. As the hot months unfold, Maurice grows ever more involved in the book he is writing – and with his female copy editor – and Pauline can only watch in dismay and anger as her daughter repeats her own mistakes in love. The heat and tension will lead to a violent, startling climax…lees verder >

Olivia Manning Het grote fortuin recensieOlivia Manning – The Great Fortune

roman uit 1990
Nederlandse vertaling: Het grote fortuin
Herfst, 1939. Het pasgetrouwde stel Guy en Harriet Pringle stapt, enkele weken na de Duitse invasie van Polen, aan boord van de trein naar Boekarest. Guy wacht een baan als docent, maar voor Harriet, die alleen en onervaren is, begint er een vreemd nieuw leven. Terwijl Guys wereld botst met die van zijn nieuwe bruid, beseft Harriet hoe weinig ze eigenlijk weet van de man met wie ze is getrouwd…lees verder >

Iris Murdoch The Sea, The Sea recensie en reviewIris Murdoch – The Sea, The Sea

roman uit 1978
Winnaar Booker Prize 1978
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage…lees verder >

John Cowper Powys Wolf Solent reviewJohn Cowper – Powys Wolf Solent

roman uit 1929
Nederlandse vertaling: Wolf Solent
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
First published in 1929, Wolf Solent was the first in John Cowper Powys’ great sequence of visionary works of fiction, set in Hardy’s Wessex but a Wessex now ravaged by the impact of the Great War and the curse of modernity. Both a lyrical story of the English countryside and an agonised account of life and love in the shadow of monstrous change, Wolf Solent is a cult novel like no other…lees verder >

Paul Scott Staying On recensie en reviewPaul Scott – Staying On

roman uit 1977
Winnaar Booker Prize 1978
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pangkot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire…lees verder >

Mary Shelley The Last Man review en informatieMary Shelley – The Last Man

Engelse dystopische roman, sciencefiction
Verschenen: februaru 1826
Taal: Engels
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Set in the late twenty-first century, a deadly pandemic leaves a lone survivor, and follows his journey through a post-apocalyptic world, devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature. Rather than give in to despair, Shelley imagines a new world where freshly-formed communities and alternative ways of being stand in for self-important politicians serving corrupt institutions, and where nature reigns mightily over humanity…lees verder >

Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle recensieDodie Smith – I Capture the Castle

roman uit 1949
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Cassandra wittily describes life growing up in a crumbling castle, with her father who suffers from crippling writer’s block, her glamorous but ineffectual step-mother and her vain but beloved sister Rose. When two visiting Americans arrive, all of their lives are turned upside down, and Cassandra experiences her first love…lees verder >

Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto eerste gothic novel ooitHorace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto

gothic novel uit 1764
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
On the day of his wedding, Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances. His calculating father Manfred fears that his dynasty will now come to an end and determines to marry his son’s bride himself – despite the fact he is already married. But a series of terrifying supernatural omens soon threaten this unlawful union, as the curse placed on Manfred’s ancestor, who usurped the lawful Prince of Otranto, begins to unfold…lees verder >

Evelyn Waugh Scoop recensie en reviewEvelyn Waugh – Scoop

roman uit 1938
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Evelyn Waugh’s brilliantly irreverent satire of Fleet Street in London. Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of The Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another…lees verder >

Virginia Woold To the Lighthouse roman uit 1927Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse

roman uit 1927
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
Nederlandse vertaling: Naar de vuurtoren
To the Lighthouseis at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged…lees verder >

Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway first editionVirginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway

roman uit 1925
Nederlandse vertaling: Mrs Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway is begin vijftig, elegant en de perfecte gastvrouw, maar ze voelt zich oud en uitgerangeerd. Haar man is succesvol, maar saai, en haar volwassen dochter heeft haar zorg niet meer nodig. Op een dag komt Clarissa, terwijl zij bloemen koopt voor het feest van die avond, haar voormalige aanbidder Peter tegen, die zij in een ver verleden heeft afgewezen. Wat zou er van haar geworden zijn als ze dertig jaar eerder voor een avontuurlijk leven met Peter had gekozen?…lees verder >

John Wyndham – The Chrysalids

sciencefictionroman uit 1955
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nuclear war has devastated the world, bringing with it a host of genetic mutations. In the bleak, primitive society that has emerged from its ruins, any sign of deviation, no matter how small, is ruthlessly rooted out and destroyed. David lives in fear of discovery, for he is part of a secret group of children who are able to communicate with each other by transferring thought-shapes into each other’s minds…lees verder >

Bijpassende boeken en informatie

Afbeelding bovenzijde: E, Robertson (Unsplash)

Engeland, Engelse romans, Engelse schrijfsters, Familieroman

Penelope Lively – Heat Wave

Penelope Lively Heat Wave review, recensie en informatie roman uit 1996 van de Engelse schrijfster.  Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van de zomerroman, de auteur en over de uitgave. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van de roman verkrijgbaar.

Penelope Lively Heat Wave review en recensie

  • “Extraordinarily good, intelligent and perceptive… very moving.” (Susan Hill)

Penelope Lively Heat Wave

Heat Wave

  • Auteur: Penelope Lively (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse roman uit 1996, zomerroman
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Penguin Modern Classis
  • Omvang: 192 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback / ebook
  • Prijs: £ 9,99 / £ 5.99
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst zomerroman van Penelope Lively uit 1996

Pauline is spending the summer at World’s End, a cottage somewhere in the middle of England. This year the adjoining cottage is occupied by her daughter Teresa and baby grandson Luke; and, of course, Maurice, the man Teresa married. As the hot months unfold, Maurice grows ever more involved in the book he is writing – and with his female copy editor – and Pauline can only watch in dismay and anger as her daughter repeats her own mistakes in love. The heat and tension will lead to a violent, startling climax.

In Heat Wave, Penelope Lively gives us a moving portrayal of a fragile family damaged and defined by adultery, and the lengths to which a mother will go to protect the ones she loves.

Penelope Lively was born 17 March 1933 in Cairo, Egypt. Sheis the Penelope Lively Heat Wave novel from 1996 first editionauthor of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London.

Bijpassende boeken

Engelse romans, Kaapverdië, Nigeriaanse auteur, Nigeriaanse roman

Irenosen Okojie – Curandera

Irenosen Okojie Curandera review, recensie en informatie van de roman van de in Nigeria geboren Britse schrijfster. Op 8 juli 2025 verschijnt bij Soft Skull Press de nieuwe roman van Irenosen Okojie. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Irenosen Okojie Curandera review en recensie

  • “Okojie’s language is worth savouring—lush with imagery, symbolism, and sensory detail … A novel that smiles kindly on those patient readers who take the time to learn its rhythm and wrestle with its deeper truths.” (Ian Mond, Locus)
  • “A striking tale of supernatural haunting, healing, and revenge … Exquisite and esoteric.” (Kirkus Reviews)

Irenosen Okojie Curandera

Curandera

  • Auteur: Irenosen Okojie (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: roman
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Soft Skull Press
  • Verschijnt: 8 juli 2025
  • Omvang: 320 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 27,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de roman van Irenosen Okojie

Set between seventeenth-century Cape Verde and contemporary London, Curandera is a kaleidoscopic story of rebirth and redemption, and a mythic tale of metamorphic recalibrations across time.

In Gethsemane, Cape Verde, the appearance of a mysterious new arrival, Zulmira, coincides with a series of strange events. Zulmira is a shamanic disciple of Oni, an omnipotent and loving yet vengeful deity.

In contemporary London, botanist Therese lives with Haitian musician Azacca, Peruvian drifter Emilien, and daring Finn. These four kindred spirits, bound together by their shared descent from Oni, travel to another realm to complete a secret, sacred task at Oni’s behest. But a disruptive object returns with them from the other plane: a bleeding ribcage, flowering with intoxicating fruit.

As Zulmira grows close to a fisherman, Domingos, and his wife and daughter, the increasingly disturbing occurrences in Gethsemane disrupt forms, time, and place. In London, Therese and her housemates, growing ever more powerful on the otherworldly fruit, discover the disturbing costs of their service to Oni. As the stage is set for the collision of two dimensions, the esoteric workings of shamanism intersect with powerful forces of friendship, love, and jealousy.

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian born British author. Her first novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular   and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer, The Guardian, and HuffPost. Vice chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature in 2021. She is the director and founder of the Black to the Future festival.

Bijpassende boeken en informatie

Engelse romans, Engelse schrijfsters

Rosalind Belben – Dreaming of Dead People

Rosalind Belben Dreaming of Dead People recensie, review en informatie Engelse roman uit 1979. Op 5 augustus 2025 verschijnt bij uitgeverij And Other Stories de heruitgave de roman van de uit Engeland afkomstige schrijfster Rosalind Belben die voor het eerst in 1979 verscheen. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van de roman, de auteur en over de uitgave. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Rosalind Belben Dreaming of Dead People recensie, review en informatie

  • “So extraordinarily good that one wants more, recognising a writer who can conjure an inner life and spirit, can envisage, in unconnected episodes, a complete world: one unified not by external circumstances but by patterns of the writer’s mind.” (Isabel Quigly, Financial Times)
  • “Belben has written pages about sexual desire, frustration and loss which are clearer and more compelling than any I can think of in literature … An achievement to celebrate.” (Maggie Gee, The Observer)
  • “Her heroine is a solitary woman who tells of her past and recalls, often, the countryside, where being alone is not painful and, if there is no meaning to life, the call to the senses is immediate. The book is beautifully written.” (Hilary Baily, The Guardian)
  • “By turns shimmering and disquieting, Belben’s exceptional voice deserves a resurgence.” (Irenosen Okojie)
  • “Deeply strange, uncompromising and extraordinarily powerful.” (Jonathan Buckley)

Rosalind Belben Dreaming of Dead People

Dreaming of Dead People

  • Auteur: Rosalind Belben (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse roman uit 1979
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: And Other Stories
  • Verschijnt: 5 augustus 2025
  • Omvang: 144 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback / ebook
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de roman uit 1979 van de Engelse schrijfster Rosalind Belben

In the ‘middle of life’ – although this is only thirty-six – and with the unsparing eye of a portraitist, Lavinia reviews her frustrations and her solitariness, the grief and the rapture: these are her seeming companions in a pageant presided over, as it were, by the medieval masks of Owl, signifying winter, and Cuckoo, for erotic love. In attendance are dreams of rustic places and once-dear animals. But it is no ordinary procession, for her childhood comes last.

The idiosyncratic Dreaming of Dead People was first published in 1979, yet remains as surprising as ever: it is frank, mordantly funny, true to itself and raw.

Rosalind Belben was born on 1 february 1941 in Dorset in the rural southwest of England where she spent her early childhood. From the age of nine she was at boarding school on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon. Almost straight from school she went in 1959 to work for the next two years in theatre, meaning to become a writer of stage plays. That didn’t happen. Her subsequent life has been nomadic, her experience and employment varied – with sometimes, nevertheless, years on end passed in a single place.

The countryside of Dorset has been both inspiration and recurrent setting. Quite as much, ‘abroad’ has exerted a powerful draw. There have been many adored destinations. Südtirol or the Alto Adige, the German-speaking Alpine region in the north of Italy, from 1978 – or in the 1990s Tunisia, with its myriad Roman and Phoenician remains and Islamic culture. Many epiphanies.

In 1987 Belben was in West Berlin as a Fellow of the Artist in Residence Program, staying for fifteen months. New editions of Dreaming of Dead People, Is Beauty Good and Choosing Spectacles are forthcoming from And Other Stories. Among her other novels are The Limit, Hound Music and Our Horses in Egypt, which won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction in 2007.

Bijpassende boeken en informatie