Jan Brokken
Jan Brokken (born June 10, 1949 in Leiden ) is a Dutch journalist and writer .
Life
Brokken is the child of a Dutch pastor who returned from the Dutch East Indies colony after the end of the war . He grew up in the village of Rhoon from 1952 . After studying journalism in Utrecht and politics in Bordeaux , he wrote a distinguished biography about Mata Hari in 1974 . He regularly publishes novels, and his international breakthrough came in 1995 with the novel Die Stowagen . He also wrote short stories and travel literature.
The novel The Blind Passengers is set on a ship that is sailing from Rotterdam across the Caribbean to Valparaíso . The protagonist is the Dutch painting restorer Maurice, who, after a private crisis, allows himself a “break” as a passenger on a cargo ship. In addition to the crew, the wife of a crew member and two stowaways from Eastern Europe are on board, whose aim is to flee to America. In addition to the events on board, such as a love affair, the biography of Maurice and his father, traumatized by the war, comes more and more into focus in the course of the novel.
He already addressed life in Rhoon in the novels De provincie and Mijn kleine waanzin . In 2013 he wrote the book De Vergelding (German: Die Vergeltung ) about the German occupation of the village and a retaliatory action in which seven men were executed by the German Wehrmacht.
Brokken lives in Amsterdam and Curaçao .
Works (selection)
- Mata Hari (1975)
- Het full literaire leven (1978)
- Schrijven (1980)
- Over FB Hotz (1982)
- De provincie (1984)
- De zee van vroeger (1986)
- Met musici (1988)
- Zaza en de president (1988)
- De moordenaar van Ouagadougou , followed by Een basiliek in het regenwoud (1989)
- De regenvogel (1991)
- Goedenavond, mrs. Rhys (1992)
- Mirror (1993)
- Volcanoes vanaf zee (1993)
- The blind passagiers (1995)
- De droevige kampioen (1997)
- Jungle Rudy (1999)
- Voel maar (2001)
- Africa (de Afrika-boeken: Zaza en de president / De moordenaar van Ouagadougou & Een basiliek in het regenwoud / De regenvogel / Nog een night ) (2001)
- Mijn little waanzin (2004)
- Waarom elf Antillianen kneelden voor het hart van Chopin (2006)
- De wil en de weg (2006)
- In het huis van de Dichter (2008)
- Feininger voorbij (2009)
- Baltic Targets (2010)
-
De Vergelding (2013)
- Revenge. Rhoon 1944. A village under German occupation . Translation of Helga van Beuningen . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-462-04725-7
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De Kozakkentuin (2015)
- Siberian summers with Dostoevsky. Novel of a friendship. From the Dutch by Helga von Beuningen, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-462-04996-1 .
Reviews
- Frank Raudszus: Review of "Die Blinden Passengers" . literaturwelt.de. Retrieved May 17, 2019.
- Katharina Teutsch: Review of “Siberian Summers with Dostojewski” . Germany radio. October 28, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2019.
Web links
- Literature by and about Jan Brokken in the catalog of the German National Library
- January Brokken in the Internet Movie Database (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Brokken, Jan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 10, 1949 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Leiden (city) |