Leo Pleysier

Leo Pleysier (January 2015, photographed by Michiel Hendryckx ).

Leo Pleysier (born May 28, 1945 in Rijkevorsel , Belgium ) is a Dutch-speaking writer from Belgium. He was born in Rijkevorsel, a village in the Antwerp Kempen , where he worked as a primary school teacher for several years and is still living today.

In his narrative he explores his relationship with his birthplace and his relatives. Fear, loneliness, warm nest, violence, the changing zeitgeist, isolation and connection between people are some of the recurring themes. Pleysier's novels are emblems of the 'human condition'. They also contain criticism of time and society between the lines.

Pleysier's first books ( Mirliton and Niets dan schreeuw ) are experimental in nature and I-oriented in terms of language and structure. Gradually the author broadened his horizons: from his own region Waar was ik weer? to England ( Shimmy ), Africa ( Zwart van het volk ), India and China ( De Gele Rivier is bevrozen , De trousse ).

Wit is altijd schoon (1989), in which he lets his talkative mother continue chatting after her death, marked the breakthrough with the audience. Typically spoken language is carefully written here. It gets a musical-rhythmic quality. Wit is altijd schoon was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize 1989 and received the F. Bordewijk Prize in 1990.

This was followed by De kast (1991), De Gele Rivier is bevrozen (1993) and Volgend jaar in Berchem (2000), in which a sister, an aunt nun and the father are the focus. De dieven zijn al gaan slapen (2003) is a mixture of autobiographical and poetic fragments.

De Gele Rivier is bevrozen has been awarded the Driejaarlijkse Belgian State Prize. In 2004 the novella De trousse was published , which again has a nun as the main character, and in 2007 the novel De Latino's about a Flemish development aid couple in Latin America. In the novel Dieperik (2010), which is linked to a childhood memory , a story is told that should actually be kept secret. The collection of stories De zoon, de maan en de sterren (2014) interweaves themes such as security and threat, the local and the global. Heel de tijd (2018) brings memories and short stories together, images of the passage of time.

Works (selection)

• The Yellow River is frozen (Berlin Verlag 1997).
  • as paperback: Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-499-22320-1 .
• Schwarz vor Volk (Berlin Verlag 1999).
• White is always beautiful (Vertaal & Verlaat 2008).

Web links

• Literature by and about Leo Pleysier in the catalog of the German National Library